Blood spatter in the theatre
by Quantum Whale
Summary: The pups get a call from an uber-popular horror movie creator, and get chosen to be the main characters in his next movies! Little did they know what was about to happen to them...
1. The beginning

**Yes, I took inspiration from a Call of Duty game, what of it?**

 **I don't know if this should be rated T or M can someone please tell me? I'm going to start it at T so more people can see this quicker and I can get a definitive answer, you can never be too sure. I guess T but who knows?**

* * *

Rico Winter was the pup's favorite horror movie creator. He made dozens of movies that were so Hyper-Realistic, but the situations the characters were put in, usually, weren't anything near realistic. Rico had a secret he vowed to never tell anyone except for the people who audition to be in his movies, who most all join the casting crew after the auditions, at least that's what Rico said. The pups hadn't really gotten into horror movies until they discovered Rico, his movies were a little visceral for some of the pups, but everything else about them was just too much for them not to like.

Zuma was clearly the biggest fan of Rico out of the pups. He collected all of his movies, could speak off word by word a couple of his movies, and even had a poster up in his pup house with Rico in front of the cover art of his movie "Horror Hounds" which was three dogs with blood dripping from their teeth with a little black and white female rottweiler getting bitten underneath them. Sometimes Zuma would just say a random fact about Rico at breakfast, which started to get creepy after about the fifth time. Rocky was probably the second biggest fan out of the pups, Chase third, Rubble forth, Marshall fifth, and Skye being the last. All of the pups, with Zuma excluded, enjoyed his movies fairly equally, so it really doesn't mean much how much you like him compared to the others.

It was one day when Ryder got a call from someone he didn't know or at least didn't have them in his main contacts.

"Hello? Who is this?" Ryder asked as he answered the call.

"Take one good look, you'll know." The caller replied.

"Rico?! Why are you calling me?" Ryder asked, astonished that Rico had called him.

"Y'know, I've heard a lot about you and your group of pups, and you guys seem like you would be perfect fits to be the main actors in my next few movies." Rico responded.

"Us? Really?" Ryder replied, excited.

"Why would I call you just to prank you into thinking I was going to let you act in my next movies." Rico joked.

"I'll go tell the pups, but where do we have to go?" Ryder asked.

"I'll tell you later, right now I've got something I gotta do," Rico replied.

"Will it take very long?" Ryder asked, wondering if he really should tell the pups right now.

"Not really, maybe about ten minutes tops." Rico answered.

"Okay then, goodbye!" Ryder said as he ended the call.

Ryder was very excited, both to tell the pups they were going to act in a Rico Winter movie, and that they were going to act in a Rico Winter movie. Just to be chosen to be _in_ a Rico Winter movie was enough, but to be the main characters, was a dream. Ryder got down the elevator to see the pups all eating their breakfast in the lookout.

"Hey, pups, how's breakfast?" Ryder asked.

"Good, as always." Rubble replied, and immediately went back to gobbling his food.

"Well, I have some very exciting news to tell you." Ryder said suspensefully.

"What is it?" Chase asked.

"Rico Winter called me and told us we were going to be acting as the main characters in his newest movies!" Ryder explained.

The all just went ecstatic and got extremely excited and vim, especially Zuma, who was on the verge of crying out of happiness. The pups eventually calmed down a bit and finally began to speak

"When is this happening?" Chase asked.

"In about ten minutes or so." Ryder replied.

"That is an odd amount of time to let your actors prepare." Skye added. "But Rico's the one that knows everything about moviemaking."

"That is a pretty short amount of time, but we can handle it." Marshall answered.

"Rico said he would call me in about ten minutes to tell me where to go to get to the set." Ryder explained.

"We'll be ready for it."

* * *

Rico took a bit longer than expected, it was about fifteen minutes rather than ten, but that wasn't really a big deal since Ryder had to tell Mayor Goodway that they weren't going to be in Adventure Bay for a while. Everest, Jake, Tracker, and Carlos are going to take over for them while they film with Rico. The pups didn't take long to prepare, all they did was grab their tools just in case something goes wrong while filming. Rico gave Ryder the directions to the city that his theatre was in, which happened to the city Rico was born in, Escapade City. It wasn't a small town like Adventure Bay, it was more towards the size of Barkingburg, possibly bigger. Rico's theatre was near the middle of the city, not directly on the middle obviously, but close to it.

Ryder and the pups arrived at the theatre and went inside. When they stepped in the door they weren't immediately greeted by anyone, in fact, it took about a minute before Rico came in and began to talk to them, most of which Zuma was talking about Rico during.

"Hey, guys." Rico said as he came into the room.

"Rico!" Zuma shouted with joy.

"That's my name, anyway, welcome, you already know why you're here so there's no point in telling you. Come with me." Rico explained.

"You never told us Rico has a Russian accent." Chase pointed out, although very slight, looking towards Zuma.

"I can't tell you every little thing about a guy." Zuma replied.

"Can you please not talk about the accent? It's enough when everyone points out how weird it is within this community." Rico asked.

"Sorry about that, Rico." Chase answered, apologetically.

Rico then brought them into a fairly open room with a projector and a green screen.

"Old school." Skye giggled.

"You're right little one, I prefer making my movies in an old-school fashion." Rico explained as he walked to the other side of the room.

"Why is that?" Rocky asked.

"So I can do this."

Rico banged on the wall, which caused a portal to appear, which sucked Ryder and the pups into it. They ended up dropping into a city that was partially on fire and completely destroyed.

"What, just, happened?" Marshall asked, terrified.

 _Damnit, they were all supposed to be in different films._ Rico said to himself, angrily.

"I'll answer that, I put you into a destroyed city for my movie." Rico explained, with an evil echo in his voice.

"How can we hear you?" Rocky asked, confused.

"Does it matter? We've gotta find a way out of here!" Chase replied.

"You know I'm not gonna just let you leave right?" Rico said as wolves started attacking Ryder and the pups.

"Can you do me a favor? When the wolves catch you and begin to rip you into pieces, can you stare into the camera? Movies are so much better when you get to witness every bit of the character's agony." Rico asked, with an evil laugh afterward.

"You're sick!" Skye shouted as the wolves approached.

"That's the point hun." Rico snickered.

"At least it's only wolves." Rocky pointed out.

 _If only you knew how wrong you are._

"If you aren't going to look at the camera yourself, I'll have the wolves snap your neck in that direction!" Rico shouted.

Just then, the first wolf reached Ryder and the pups and started running at them. As the wolf was running, Rocky jumped on top of it and drilled his screwdriver into its head.

"I believe in an eye for an eye." Rocky shouted whilst standing on top of the wolf's corpse.

"We need to find a way out of here!" Chase said as he ran off.

"Chase! Wait! We have to stick together!" Ryder shouted at Chase, but Chase didn't listen as he ran off.

Ryder tried to run after him, but the path got blocked off by three wolfs, just wanting to rip him to shreds. All the other pups, save for Zuma, were using their tools to kill the wolves as they attacked, more coming after each one they killed. Rocky used his screwdriver, Marshall sprayed water on hem to stun them, Rubble slammed them with his shovel, and Skye was slamming into them with her wings. Sometimes the wolves jumped into a fire and got burned alive, sometimes the wolves scratched the pups.

"Oh, I'm ripping that poster right of my pup house when I get home," Zuma shouted, extremely angry.

Zuma tried to hold it in, but he just couldn't do it, he snapped, pit his claws out, and went on a rampage. The other pups just stared as Zuma, one by one, clawed each wolf to death without any fear or remorse. He eventually stopped, as the number of wolves coming for them shrank, causing the pups to momentarily get excited.

"Ryder, the wolves aren't coming as quickly anymore!" Skye howled.

"You should go check on your friend, maybe he's hogging all of the wolves." Rico explained, laughing like crazy.

"You son of a-" Rocky snarled, getting interrupted by Rico.

"Anger goes a long way, besides, it makes the movie more interesting." Rico laughed.

"I got this." Skye said as she flew off in the direction Chase went.

As Skye was flying, however, she got shot out of the sky with a cannon. There was a cannon sitting on a blocked road, which a wolf used to shoot her straight out of the air. Skye couldn't get up, she had literally just gotten shot out of the air with a bomb, being alive was a huge feat already.

"That was quite entertaining to watch. The cameras even caught you screaming as you were shot out of the air! Your a good actor little lady." Rico laughed.

Skye just laid there, she was in too much pain to stand up or do anything but lay there, lay there and wait for a wolf to rip her apart. She guessed if she ever went out, it would be best to go out in a cool way, she just didn't want it to be so soon. She just closed her eyes as she sat there and waited, waited for the wolves to tear apart her body, and let the blood spill.


	2. When the blood spills

**it's getting worse, keeping it a T until someone objects with a good reason.**

* * *

"Skye? Skye!" is all Skye could hear, with her ears ringing as she lied on the floor awaiting her death.

Skye couldn't make out who was saying her name, it was extremely faint, although the voice was getting louder. This was it, she was about to die by wolves sinking their teeth into her body, making her blood spill all over the floor, and leave her body to sit there for the others to stare at. All because she fell for Rico's sick lie. If anyone in Skye's life deserved to die, it would be Rico, all of those innocent people and pups he murdered within these films, wolves ripping them apart, some getting burned alive, and even getting electrocuted right in front of the camera. Rico seemed like an innocent pup, he didn't look, talk, or act like he would be the type to lie about killing people just so he could be a famous movie creator.

When Skye's pain had gone away, for the most part, it was too late, a wolf was standing in front of her, sinking its teeth directly into her stomach and ripping out and apart, anything it could get ahold of. All right in front of Marshall, he had tried to run to Skye before the wolves got ahold of her, but he wasn't fast enough, and now he just stared at the one wolf as he ripped Skye to pieces, some of Skye's blood even flew into Marshall's face as the wolf ripped her up.

"That death scene was boring as hell! You didn't scream, squirm, cry or anything! Ugh, try again!" Rico shouted, insanely annoyed.

"Bring her back, but make sure she feels all the pain." Rico commanded somebody.

Then, as if by magic, Skye came back as if nothing ever happened to her, except she felt all the pain, all the pain from the wolf ripping her apart, and that's what caused Skye to finally begin crying.

"Haha! Now, this is what we need! Any form of suffering is beautiful to the eyes and music to the ears in a horror movie! Now, all we need is death." Rico laughed.

Marshall sat by Skye's side for the entirety of her suffering, fending off wolves, and comforting her when she cried. Ryder and the pups joined him after a while, once they realized they were both gone for a while, and helped Marshall fight the wolves, which was needed since water can't really kill a wolf. Chase even came back to help since he saw Skye get shot out of the air by the cannon, he abandoned everything he was doing to go see if Skye was okay, though he brought quite a few wolves. They were able to defend Skye until her recovery, Rocky got bitten right in the hip by a wolf, and Marshall got scratched in the face.

"I love you guys." Skye mumbled.

"Can you stand?" Marshall asked, wolves getting killed behind him and blood splattering on his back.

"I don't think so, it still hurts." Skye whimpered.

"Don't strain yourself, Skye." Marshall replied.

"Well, this is boring! To hell with the wolves!" Rico angrily yelled.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Marshall asked, shaking.

All of the wolves began to walk away, which gave Skye enough time to stagger to her paws and hug each, and every one of her friends. During this short break, they searched for an exit, but found nothing but destroyed buildings and fire with roasted wolves inside of them.

"Break time is over now, so how about you just die so we can have something to work with? You've already screwed up every single one of your lines, so could you jump in the ire or something? Or maybe let these guys kill you." Rico said, laughing at the end.

"Let who kill us?" Zuma asked, looking around.

"Maybe t-those guys?" Marshall replied, shaking, and stuttering.

"What? Wh- oh, my, goodness." Chase froze.

"What have you done Rico?" Rocky growled.

"I've simply made some monsters to kill you, and if they do, make sure you scream this time! Maybe even jump into a fire as your being ripped apart? It would be beautiful if you burned alive. The screams would be like Mozart and the sound of your flesh sizzling like Beethoven." Rico explained, laughing as always.

"Your idea of monsters killing us is making half ripped apart, zombie version of us?" Zuma screeched, about to vomit like Marshall already did.

"If wolves can't kill you, maybe you can kill yourself." Rico responded.

"We will kill ourselves, Rico." Rocky replied.

Before Rico could respond with anything, Rocky drilled his screwdriver into, the zombified version of himself's head.

"Congratulations, you killed yourself, now can, you do it five times over?" Rico laughed as five more Rockies came toward them.

"We need to stop defending ourselves, and try to find a way out of here!" Chase explained.

"Yes, but how?" Marshall asked.

"We came into this place from a portal, right?" Chase started as a Zombie Zuma jumped towards him, he dodged it and caught him in his net. "So there has to be one to get out." Rocky then stabbed the Zombie Zuma with his screwdriver.

"Some show off pup you are. Sure, I'll tell you that there is a portal out of this film, but your inevitable deaths will surely come sooner. All I'm asking for is a death scene that has you screaming, with blood and guts everywhere." Rico stated.

"Why don't any of your movies have the sort of brutality your asking for right now?" Skye asked none of Rico's movies were as brutal as Rico wants from this one.

"There are seven of us, Skye. Rico never had seven actors to kill before." Rocky told her, a lot calmer than the rest of the pups.

"We have to go, now! These zombie pups are pretty fast!" Chase explained, they had killed about five zombies during that short talk.

"We as to get through the pups first Chase!" Zuma told him, there were about ten zombies in front of them.

"I got this." Skye said as she slammed into each zombie subsequently.

"Okay, I have to admit, that was cool, I might elect you as my favorite actor this year!" Rico blurted. "Well, you still have to die in some amazing way to get that honor."

"That wouldn't be an honor." Skye retorted.

With that, the adventure to escaping Rico's film begun. The pups were eventually able to fend off the zombies without any threat at all, causing Rico to scream at them and send the wolves back in, when that didn't work he sent both in at the same time. The pups hadn't found anything at first, but when they did, it wasn't anything helping them escape, but rather an audio recording.

* * *

 _"Some say that it is better to have loved and lost, then to have never loved at all. I never lost at love, but rather lost my love." Rico's voice said at the start of the recording._

 _"She was a beautiful Border Collie, just like me, I had met her twice before finally talking to her, as soon as she spoke, it was difficult to listen to what she was saying when you're paying more attention to her beauty. We became friends and talked to each other every time we met on the street. I loved every second that we talked, every second of being around her."_

 _"It didn't take long before we got together and moved in with each other, my life was perfect, I had my true love always at my side, I had a home to live in with her, and she even had a job so we could be financially stable, hehe."_

 _"We eventually figured out that we wanted a family, more than just me and her. We wanted to have a little pup, besides, we had everything we needed for one, a home, money, parents to take care of it, and basically everything else, and so we did."_

 _"When we figured out that she had gotten pregnant, it was one of the happiest days of our lives. We knew we had to be mentally prepared for pups, and we also had to accept that we could only keep one, we both knew, that would be the hardest decision of our lives. We went out and got everything we needed for a pup, and even found what hospital she would have her pups in since the city is so large, there are multiple."_

 _"Who knew pups come out so fast? It felt like it was just a week since we figured out she was pregnant and when we got to the hospital. It seemed like this was going to be an amazing moment, we were going to have the child we wanted, and we were completely prepared for it. This turned out to be the opposite of an amazing moment, more like the worst moment of my life. Both her, Shiva, and her pups died at the moment."_

 _"When the news was broken to me, I was expectedly heartbroken. I lost my one truest love, and anything I had left to remember her, all I had left were the gifts she had given me while she was still alive and living with me. I cried, cried every day just thinking about her, she was my world, and I lost her because we wanted one, more, pup, in, the, family." Rico began to cry a bit in the recording._

 _"I didn't even have a job for myself! I was a trainwreck, my true love was killed, my chance of having a pup was destroyed, and I didn't have a job to keep myself stable. I didn't think life could get worse, and I don't think it has gotten any better."_

* * *

All the pups were crying, and Ryder was on the verge of tears as the recording ended. They were being attacked whilst listening to Rico's recording, but it was very light since Rico knew they would die to the zombies or the wolves.

"You, were not, supposed, to hear that!" Rico screamed in anger, but a little softer than usual.

"I actually, kind of feel bad for Rico now." Rocky explained. "If he wasn't a crazy pup that has killed dozens of innocents."

"No one deserves that, I guess we have the reason he's doing this." Rubble replied.

 _Oh, how I wish you did._ Rico thought.

"Well, we need to get out of here!" Chase shouted. "We don't have time to sympathize, the murderer!"

"Chase, how do we know Rico wasn't lying when he said there was a portal out of here?" Skye asked.

"Do we have a choice?" Chase asked back.

When the pups were finished crying over Rico's loss, they resumed there search on the way out of the film. No pups were even phased by any of the things attacking them, they occasionally got scratched or hit with a tennis ball, but that's nothing serious. Rico started to get mad that nothing was happening in his film, constantly screaming at the pups for not screaming or dying. Eventually, the anger got the best of him.

"Fine! You want to ruin my movie with your constant searching for you precious portal to get out of here, I'll bring you to it!" Rico shouted as he teleported them all to an open area with a portal in front of them.

"Rico, I know you have something planned, so just do it now!" Zuma commented.

"Very well..." Rico began laughing.

"What?"

"In?"

"The?"

"World?"

"Is?"

"That?"

"Thing?"

They began hyperventilating as the horrific monster slowly descended in front of them. This was easily the most terrifying thing Rico has ever created, and it's equally as disgusting as it is terrifying.

"What is it you ask? Hahaha, it's simply a monster I made." Rico laughed.

The monster, was a floating, grey, detached, female head, with body parts hanging from underneath it, swinging around like tentacles on an octopus. It had the most terrifying screech, and it was staring straight at Ryder and the pups.

"So, this is why you wanted us to just get here!" Skye commented.

"I've never had to use this monster before or any of the others that I have, but I feel as if this is the perfect time for it!" Rico explained.

"How do we get passed this thing?" Marshall asked, shuddering on every word.

"You don't, you have to kill it." Rico replied. "It deactivated the portal if you didn't notice."

"We've gotta run! Now!" Ryder commanded, it was coming towards them, and fast.

"How do we escape it?" Rocky asked.

"It has no arms! Find a building or something!" Zuma replied.

It was right behind them, Rubble was in the back and got one of the monster's "tentacles" rubbed in him. Ryder and the pups, found a building before the monster got them and slammed the door on its face, or body, whatever it is.

"Oh, my, god! Why can't you die? It's not that hard! The little girl was able to do it! Granted she did it horribly, but she still did it!" Rico shouted.

"How do we kill this thing?" Zuma asked, after the monster went away for a bit, and while Rubble tried to wipe the blood from the monster's "tentacle" off him.

They had to think for a bit, but Rocky soon got an idea, "We pull it's dangling body parts."

"Yes, yes, it's disgusting, but hear me out, it has to be kept alive from somewhere, right? And it's just ahead, so we pull it's dangling bits to, you get the point."

"This is gonna be gross." Rubble commented.

"There are six main, dangling parts, on the thing, so one of us won't have to pull one." Ryder explained.

"Skye!" Chase blurted out before anyone could say a word.

"Me? Why?"

"You literally died, you don't deserve to go through this." Chase explained sympathetically.

Skye just ran over to Chase and hugged him, causing him to blush like crazy before finally saying, "You're welcome."

"To hell with your hiding!" Rico shouted, as he suddenly removed every building in the area. "I just now remembered I could do that."

"Alright, we know what we have to do!" Marshall said, confidentially.

"Let's do this thing!"

Chase shot a tennis ball at the back of the monster's head and got it to start chasing him, while Marshall ran behind it. Marshall caught up to in and yanked the dangling body part, and when he did, blood fell out and landed right on him, causing him to gag. It then proceeded to pick up Marshall with its remaining parts and chucked him across the place, the whole place.

"Haha, yes! Now that was gold!" Rico cheered. "Now so long as the rest of you die, this movie will be great!"

Zuma wasn't known to have a temper but was known for what happens when he gets angry, well, now he is. All the pups were angry, and it would be a lie to say Zuma was the angriest, but he snapped.

"You know, what? I'm glad you had to suffer through Shiva dying, although I wish you died and went to hell with Hitler!" Zuma twitched.

"I..." is all Rico could get out before Zuma interrupted him.

"You want a good movie? I'll give you one."

Zuma then, legitimately jumped inside of the monsters head and clawed it apart from the inside out. The thing screeched in pain as Zuma mercilessly ripped the things face apart from the inside. The pups and even Ryder were disgusted by what they were witnessing, they were watching a floating head get ripped apart from the inside out but one of there friends. Eventually, they saw the monster's head rip in half, and Zuma, fully covered in blood emerged from the inside. No one could speak anything after what they just witnessed, the only words spoken were Marshall, who was teleported back by Rico after the monster was killed, barking out his water cannon to wash the blood off of Zuma.

"And I thought I was insane." Rico finally spoke, breaking the long silence. "You just killed that thing more brutal than I ever would've thought of killing an actor. You would be really good at my job."

"Shut up Mr. I want everyone dead because my love died, you will suffer the same fate right after we get out of here!" Zuma growled.

"Oh, no no no, remember when I said you would star in my next _films?_ It's plural, I have more movies to send you to."

The portal then reactivated since the monster was now dead, it looked just like the one that sent them here, although they didn't get a good look at that.

"Step in the portal, it'll take you to the next film, so you can die in other ways." Rico laughed.

"Well, we don't have much of a choice, pups, let's go." Ryder explained as he stepped towards the portal.

"Let's go."

And with that, one film was down. Only one.

-City corruption - Rico Winter

* * *

 **Oh my goodness that was really fun to write, please tell me what you think of this because I really want to know how people like this story. Also, the monster was inspired, not stolen.**


	3. From one, to another

**This is probably my favorite story of mine, I'm having a lot of fun writing it.**

* * *

Ryder and the pups stepped into the portal and were teleported to the next film Rico had planned for them.

"Welcome to the most cliche island ever!" Rico commented, the island had a small batch of trees in the middle, that was surrounded by sand. "There is just one thing that sets this island apart from any others, though. It's covered in blood and dismembered body parts! Perhaps you could add some of your own to the set?"

"We're going to have to step in that, aren't we?" Rubble whimpered, pointing his paw at the blood on the ground.

Ryder just slowly nodded as the pups began walking around, being forced to step in puddles of blood for almost every step. It's was much worse for the pups than it was for Ryder, the pups had to put their bare paws in the blood puddles, which got the blood all over them, while Ryder was wearing shoes and the blood got all over them.

"Why does Skye have to be so lucky?" Rocky asked since Skye was just flying over it all.

"Actually. Skye, can you fly up and see what's outside of this forest?" Ryder suggested.

"Will do Ryder!" Skye responded as she flew up to do what Ryder said.

"It's really just an island Ryder, nothing special to it, just sand."

"There's no way this is just a normal island." Zuma commented. "Rico would've surely made this special in some way."

"You're right, there is much more to this set than meets the eye. This is just the beginning." Rico confirmed. "Speaking of, how about we add a little something to try and kill you? Maybe even, give us a death scene we can work with!"

"Great," Chase mumbled.

"I think I can guess which one of you is going to die first." Rico laughed.

"Who?" Marshall gulped.

"Pinkie."

Immediately after Rico said that pup-sized wasps started to attack them.

"How does that make any sense?" Rocky asked, questioning how Rico got giant wasps onto the set.

"When has anything Rico has done made any sense?" Zuma responded.

Before anyone could join in, one of the wasps attacked Skye and knocked her to the ground. The wasps then began stinging Skye, over and over, although she had died on the first sting since it had hit her directly in the face. Ryder and the pups didn't know Skye was already dead and ran to where she had crashed, to which they saw Skye's corpse, stung dozens of times.

"Why Skye? Again?" Chase cried, flopping onto the ground.

"Don't worry you stupid Shepard, the little one yet again failed to make anything close to a good death scene. There was no blood, no screaming, no squirming, nothing to make it interesting! All that happened was she fell out of the sky and got stung in the face! Bring her back, again." Rico shouted. "And make sure she doesn't feel the pain, that won't add anything interesting."

When Skye came back, as she had done before, Chase immediately hugged her.

"Good thing there are no blood puddles here," Marshall commented.

"We have to go before the wasps swarm us here," Ryder explained, beginning to walk away.

"Well, the exit of the forest is right here." Zuma told him, smiling a bit.

"Oh, well then, let's leave then."

Once they left the forest and hit the edges of the island, they began to look around and try to figure out exactly what Rico meant when he said that "There's more than meets the eye." It didn't take long until Rocky found something.

"Hey guys, there are three more islands, just that way." Rocky told them, pointing his paw in the direction of the other islands.

"So this island is part of a group of four." Ryder though out loud.

"Can I just say it would be absolutely beautiful for you to be ripped apart by one of the sharks? So could you do me a favor and jump in the water?" Rico laughed, which everyone completely ignored.

"How are we going to escape this film, Ryder?" Skye asked.

"Maybe the portal is on one of the other islands?" Ryder suggested. "It could be anywhere. In the water on this island, underground on any of these island on another island, or many other places."

"True, but how are we going to look anywhere but this island?" Rocky asked. "There are sharks in the water so we can get to the other islands or look underwater."

"You know sharks are normally nice right?" Zuma explained. "Although this set was made by Rico, so anything really is thrown out the window I guess."

"Your saying I can't make anything realistic? That's why I'm popular for my realistic movies." Rico barked.

"Any monsters in your movies aren't realistic, Rico. Can you explain to me how a floating decapitated head is realistic in any way?" Zuma argued.

Rico didn't respond to this and just sat and waited for them to figure out a way to get to the other islands. The wasps were having trouble finding Ryder and the pups since they still believed they were in the forest, but they eventually found them which made it a bit difficult to think. They though for a while and eventually decided to just look around the island they were on since they had no ideas for how to get anywhere else. Rico said there is much more to this set than first meets the eye, so there has to be a way to get somewhere else.

"Ryder. Um, I found something weird..." Rubble called, which caused Ryder and the to look almost immediately.

"This tree... It feels... Metal." Rubble explained, banging his paw on the tree.

"Stop messing around with the tree! There's nothing special about it!" Rico shouted.

"So there's clearly something special about it." Zuma whispered to himself, he knew exactly how Rico talked when he was lying.

"The wasps are having a hard time finding you, actually. So let's bring in something with a little more... Instinct, shall we?" Rico laughed.

Rico took the wasps out of the area and sent in the other monsters he had made for this movie. Once the wasps left the ground began to shake a little bit before they saw what Rico had sent towards them. They were trees, walking towards them, ents that were the size of the trees in the forest they were in.

"How are we gonna deal with that?" Chase asked, slowly backing away.

"There trees dude, they can't be very fast." Zuma replied.

"Didn't you say that Rico's movies have realism thrown out the window?"

"Well, yeah, but... Okay, you win."

"What are we gonna do Ryder?" Marshall asked, just staggering backward.

"You're not supposed to deal with the ents, they're supposed to rip you apart limb by limb and or flatten you like a pancake. Both would be equally as fun to watch! As long as they're fun to hear as well." Rico laughed, sounding a little bit annoyed.

Skye then found a lever hidden in the bushes and the trees, which she pulled since they were in a bit of a sticky situation right about now. She didn't see what it did at first, but when she did, she immediately told everyone.

"Hey, guys. The weird tree moved."

They looked over and as Skye had said, the tree Rubble discovered was moved to the side and revealed a hole with a ladder that leads to a room. They didn't really have much of a choice but to jump in, or for Ryder climb in, since ents were completely surrounding them and they still didn't know how to deal with them. There was a lever on the inside of the room which they pulled, and it moved the tree back to its original place, as well as overriding any time the other one was pulled.

"Oh my god. This room is for me and my crew, and not, some resistant actors, that won't die properly! I will find another way in there, before I do, just enjoy your break." Rico shouted.

"Why did you make this lever override the other if you knew this was here?" Rocky asked knew it had to be purposeful.

"Don't worry about it! It's just for safety, okay?" Rico yelled, sounding annoyed again.

"So why did the one outside work?" Skye asked this was starting to confuse her.

"It's on a timer! The one outside works over the one inside after a while! Why did I make this so goddamn convenient? These were all safety measures..."

"So, Ryder, how are we going to safely get out of here?" Marshall asked since the only way out was the way they came.

"We'll figure something out, we've got time," Ryder respond. "I guess we could just look around this room, see what's around."

Although the room was small, it had quite a lot of things in it, things that probably helped out in making the areas they went to. They did find something pretty big though, it was an audio recording just like the one they found in the last film, the one that told them about Rico's loss.

* * *

 _"Its hard to, accept or think about someone's death, especially of there family or important to you. But when you witness someone getting killed, and you do nothing about it out of fear... It's hard to get in off your conscience." Rico's recording started._

 _"I've never thought of my self quite the same after that happened. I couldn't look at myself as a good person anymore. I had just watched someone getting killed and that's it, I just watched, I didn't do anything else. I was just afraid for myself, I didn't want anything to happen to me so I just watched as someone was killed before my eyes, its hard to look away from something like that. I could've saved someone, or at least, help avenge them, but all I did was fear for my own life."_

 _"It was night time and I just got out of my house and started walking down the street, to go somewhere, I don't remember where I was going. Anyway, while I was walking, I didn't hear the person scream, actually, I saw it. It was inside of a closed building, somehow broken into, and I saw it through the windows. One person was choking the other while having him pinned on the floor. The guy underneath was struggling in every way possible and just hoping for a chance to breathe... Or someone to help him. The killer didn't have any weapons, that I saw at least, and all he was doing was choking the guy. But I still did nothing. I could've tried to help myself, tried to find someone, call someone, anything! But all I did was stare... All because I was afraid for myself."_

 _"I watched that man's final struggles to escape, and I even saw where the killer hid the body! I still did nothing. I don't know if that killer was caught or punished, but I don't care! I could've made sure he was, and I could've saved a life in the process. I've had that in my conscience ever since it happened, and I just wish I could go back in time, and save that man... You will always make mistakes in life, there's no escaping that, but not all mistakes cause someone to lose their life."_

 _"I've witnessed quite a few other tragedies happen, but this one was the worst for me because I could've helped, but didn't, out of fear. I was never the selfish type, and I know this as true. I've been complimented several times on my selflessness, but for some reason, went it mattered most, I did the selfish thing. You know, for me being such a nice and caring pup, it makes me wonder why horrible things always happen to me. I like making other people's lives great, yet the world just seems to repay me with a multitude of awful things happening to me, I just don't get it."_

 _"So, there's good news and bad news here, the bad news is that my life seems to go horrendously despite me helping nearly everyone, and the good news is that my life seems to go horrendously_ _despite me helping nearly everyone. My life is still going, it may be going badly, but it's going, and that's what I care about. Sure I wish this or that d_ _idn't happen, or that I did this or that, but, you can't wish for that if your life isn't going in the first place, right?"_

* * *

When the recording ended, they all just sat there in silence for a while, before Skye finally said, "Seems like Rico has changed a lot."

"Sure seems like it, doesn't it?" Zuma replied.

"Can you please stop listening to whatever those are? I don't know how those were recorded or how they were put into these films, but stop listening to them!" Rico shouted at them since during the recording he knew it wouldn't do anything.

"We need to get out of here somehow." Chase told them all. "Rico will find a way in some time."

"You know guys, either way, you do this you're giving me something here. If you do end up escaping these films, I can kill you myself, making for an interesting scene after everything you went through. If you die in these films, in a proper way with screaming, blood and guts flying everywhere, that would be even better. Choose your poison... Or don't." Rico laughed.

"What makes you think you can kill each one of us? It's seven against one!" Zuma asked.

"You'll see if you make it that far."

"Couldn't we try to spark a fire with the technology for this room? These are trees attacking us." Rocky suggested.

"That would be a little risky for us to do. We could hurt ourselves, or if anything important to escaping is located within this forest, it could burn." Ryder responded.

They didn't have any idea of how to deal with the ents Rico sent at them and spent a very long time thinking about what to, with many ideas being shot around, and all being rejected. Rico started getting angrier at them for staying in the room for so long, but that really didn't matter at all since there was only so much he could do to them. The pups started getting sadder and sadder, beginning to believe they had no chance of escaping, and that death was the only way out. Zuma had one of the longest tempers of the pups. It was difficult to make him angry, but when he does, there's almost no way of stopping him from doing what he wants, so it seemed. The pups were both angry and sad, same with Zuma, but right now it wasn't enough for him to do anything crazy.

"This is going to be our end!" Rocky cried, flopping on the ground and putting is paws on his eyes.

"Don't say that! You n-" Skye was cut off by Rocky while trying to erasure him.

"Skye! We are stuck underground, I a room with one exit, and outside of that exit are trees that are going to rip us apart and we have no way of stopping them. We'd be best off giving Rico what he wants and just giving him the marvelous death scene that he wants so badly so at least our death has something to it." Rocky had tears in his eyes as he shouted at Skye.

That is what got Zuma angry enough to climb right out of the room, and unleash his anger on the ents.

"Finally coming out hiding, huh?" Rico commented, unknowing of why Zuma had got out.

Zuma didn't respond to Rico, all he did was jump on the ent by the entrance, dodging every one of its swings and clawing at its face. It tried to grab Zuma, but there was nothing stopping him now, this ent was about to die by Zuma clawing its face off. There was no nothing but little pieces of the tree falling down as Zuma clawed at it. It eventually fell over with practically no face left on it and Zuma just triumphantly stood on it, waiting for the others to come out if the underground.

"You can try to kill us with huge wasps. You can trap us underground with ents. But nobody does what you did to Rocky." Zuma growled, still alone above ground, save for Rico of course.

"Aw, you have a gay crush? That will make his death so much better." Rico laughed.

Ryder and the pups finally came out of the underground after Rico's remark and noticed the dead ent Zuma was standing on.

"Can anything stop you, Zuma?" Skye giggled, trying to have even the slightest amount of fun because of what had just happened.

Zuma jumped off of the ent, only to be greeted by a hug from Rocky and him saying, "So do I."

"This is supposed to be a horror movie, not a puppy romance! And if it was, it sure wouldn't be a god forbidden gay one!" Rico annoyingly shouted at them.

Both Zuma and Rocky looked over at Ryder and the pups who were just smiling and nodding there heads, showing that they are perfectly fine, and happy with them.

"Um, hate to ruin the moment but, uh, the ents are coming back." Chase explained, alerting everyone.

"We've gotta leave!" Skye said, beginning to see the ents coming from inside the forest.

"Well, now we know how fast they are..." Rubble added, looking at the ents and seeing that they could easily outrun them, for a while anyway.

"We won't be able to run away forever, but we can stay away for a while." Ryder replied.

"Let's go then."

The pups began to run from the ents, that were only slightly slower than them, so if at any moment one of them got tired... Well, Skye could only carry so much weight. She was flying away, which made it so she couldn't get tired, she was much faster, and the ents had almost no chance to get her. If one of the pups began to feel tired, the plan was that they would hop on Skye, but they didn't k ow if that would work for sure, but anything goes when your fighting for your life. They managed to get out of the forest, which seemed like a good idea at first, no blood, nothing to trip on, but the ents could see them at basically all times. They stuck with it though and searched around the shore, the ents made it difficult to look very efficiently, but they still looked nonetheless.

"Rico said that there was much more to this set than at first glance, which means there has to be a way to do something other than run around an island." Rocky stated, panting from running so much.

"He could've been talking about the monsters." Chase responded, not panting quote as much as Rocky.

"It has to be more than just this island, dude. Rico wouldn't make a movie with us just running around and on an island." Zuma added.

"You're right, gay pup number one. There is much more to this movie than you've seen. Four times more, actually." Rico answered, basically telling them exactly what he meant.

"So we can get to the other islands." Skye pointed out, looking at the wasps that were hovering over the water.

"How could we pull that off?" Rubble asked, as he noticed the ents starting to walk away.

"Guys, they aren't chasing us anymore."

They all looked back, and as Rubble had said, saw that the ents were walking in the opposite direction. They didn't appear to be going back in the forest, just to the other side of the island.

"Could be an ambush." Rocky commented, since they could be doing a loop around.

"I don't control the monsters you bimbo, they have minds of there own." Rico explained, saying something that actually helped them.

"So what are they doing?" Marshall asked, concerned, but happy to get a break from running.

"I don't know, but this will be a since breather." Ryder answered.

"Right."

The pups were now able to look around the island's shore for ways to either get out or to help them get out. They picked up most of what they found just in case it would help them in any way, and they found a surprising amount of things. The most important thing they found was a machine which looked like it could be entered, and activated if it had the right source of power.

"Rico... Why do you do this?" Zuma asked in an annoyed tone.

"What? I know my movies are a little cliche but surely not as much as most horror movies!" Rico responded angrily.

"I guess we have to find a power source for this." Rocky groaned, turning around to go search.

"Why not use Rico's ego?" Zuma mumbled under his breath, which only Rocky heard and he giggled a bit.

The pups searched around the shore and found nothing, and the ents hadn't come back either. They didn't find anything to power the machine on the shore, and they even looked in the forest a bit for things. They dug underground a little, looked in trees, bushes but never found anything. That was until Marshall asked a certain question.

"Whats keeping these ents alive anyway?"

"This is Rico were talking about here. He's probably using some sort of magic to keep them alive." Zuma replied, slightly annoyed at what was happening right now.

"Would hurt to check that ent you killed. We should go back and see if there's anything." Ryder explained, they had nothing else to try.

"Let's go then."

* * *

When the Ryder and the pups got over to the ent they Zuma had killed, they started to rip it up to see if there was anything to it to help them out. Rico didn't say anything as they searched the tree, which confused them in a way since he always yelled at them for not dying, but they passed it on as him wanting more to happen in the movie.

"Hey, look what I found!" Chase told them.

They looked at Chase and in front of him was some power core type-of-thing.

"Again, Rico with the cliche parts to his movies." Zuma sighed.

"You need your audience to understand what's happening a little better, as my audience is normally paying attention to the realism and gore of the movies, adding something that is cliche helps out with them being able to know what's happening without thinking about it too much." Rico explained.

"Wow, Rico just made it seem like all movies should be full of cliche moments." Marshall joked, although Rico did have a point.

"Let's go put this in the machine, see what happens." Chase said as they grabbed the "power core" from out of the ent.

"Why don't you just die and get it over with? Seriously, my while audience wants to see blood, and guts come out of you as you scream. I don't understand why you continuously attempt to escape these films when there are many more to come! Even if you escape those, I will kill you myself, and still getting the movie, and death scene I want so. If I can't kill you a

fter all of this, well, let's just hope you die before we make it to that point." Rico explained.

None of the pups paid much attention to him as he said that, they just continued to run towards the machine to see what it would do, if anything at all, when the ent's core was added. It did make them a little nervous though, about how many films there would be, and how Rico planned to kill them if they made it through all of his films. It didn't stop them, but it did freak them out just a little bit. They got back to the machine, still without and ents or wasps trying to kill them, which was both good and bad.

"Okay, Chase, put the core in!" Ryder told Chase.

The machine had a little area on the side, that was like Rocky's claw except it wasn't bent at all, it was two straight lines, and that is where Chase put the core.

"Knowing Rico, this is going to work for sure." Zuma said, and he was right.

"Yes!"

"Seems like only two can go in at a time. We just have to hope the core doesn't lose its power before we all use it." Ryder explained, trying not to think about what could happen if it didn't work.

"So, who's going with who and when are they going?" Skye asked.

"Chase should go first, he has a megaphone and could tell is where he's at if he didn't go too far." Rocky explained.

"How do we know this machine takes us anywhere at all?" Chase asked, the machine wasn't labeled or anything.

"One word, Rico."

"Whats that supposed to mean?" Rico asked angrily.

"You know exactly what it means."

"So who's going with me?" Chase asked.

"Ryder, the last thing we want is him getting left being behind and us being on our own.

"Well-" Ryder started.

"You're going first." Rocky cut off, which got a nod from Ryder.

"Two down, five to go." Marshall commented.

"I think three of us cod fit if we chose the right pups." Rubble explained, since Skye was a pretty tiny pup, she could probably fit with two others, depending on the size of them.

"Us and Skye." Rocky replied, referring to that he and Zuma were now together he referred to the two of them as "us".

"You should go last, if any of the pups should get stuck her we should make it as even as possible, four at the next, three here." Marshall explained, which everyone agreed too.

The pups went over the order and had Ryder and Chase go in first, and use the machine. They activated the machine from the inside and the rest of the pups watched as they disappeared after a flash. They waited a bit and heard Chase's voice coming from another one of the islands, so they now knew exactly what the machine did, it teleported them to another island, exactly ad Rocky suspected. Rubble and Marshall went, and the same thing happened, they disappeared after a flash, and they heard Chase's voice confirming that they had arrived on the other island. Rocky, Zuma, and Skye went in, pressed the button, and nothing happened.

"Great." Skye groaned as she hopped out of the teleporter.

"What do we do now?" Zuma asked, turning and smiling at Rocky.

"The only thing we could really do is get another core from an ent, or try and find a weaker source." Rocky explained, being the pup who makes and knows a lot about machines, he would be telling them a lot.

"So which one?" Zuma asked.

"If we can find the weaker power source in an easy manner, we will settle for that, if we can't find one, we will have to get another one from an ent." Rocky explained.

"Well then, time to start looking!"

They started to look around the island, trying to find a power source, or even the ents that ran away before, something to get them to the next island. Skye felt a bit awkward, being stuck alone on an island with Zuma and Rocky who had just gotten together and it just felt a little weird for her being there with them, one that she was alone with just them, and two that she was the female of the team, but it was only slightly awkward. Each of them was confident that they would find a way to repower the machine since none of Rico's monsters were attacking them, so there was nothing stopping them from doing, basically anything. It could even be possible that Rocky could build a power source out of things that they found. There were many different ways they could get a way to power this machine and only a few scenarios where they wouldn't make it out, so they were searching with confidence.

* * *

"Well, pups, looks like the machine ran out of power for them..." Ryder commented, since none of them appeared where they all had.

"What do we do? We can't just stay here but we can leave either." Marshall asked.

"We could look around, just making sure we stay close to the teleport spot." Ryder suggested, which the pups had no choice but to agree too.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Rubble asked, still confused as to what would get them out of this film and into the next.

"When have we ever known the answer to that, Rubble?" Chase replied.

"We knew we needed a power source for the machine that sent us here." Rubble answered, and he was technically right.

"We should've had Rocky come here from the start, he would be a huge help." Marshall explained, trying to stop Chase and Rubble.

"Well, he was the one that mainly made the decisions." Chase responded. "And he wanted to be with Zuma."

"He did, and he decided to go last." Ryder explained.

"Each one of you agreed with this decision, so you're objectively calling yourselves stupid! And I agree." Rico finally spoke, only to them.

"No we're not, we're just saying we made a mistake, not that we're stupid." Chase explained, though he knew Rico just wanted to annoy them.

"Whatever."

"I'm going to start looking now." Rubble said, walking away.

"Looking around this area doesn't seem like the most useful thing to do." Chase complained, rolling his eyes.

"Look anyway, you never know what we could find." Marshall explained.

"That is true." Ryder added, which caused Chase to start looking around.

They searched, and sometimes let one of them venture out a little since three of them at the spot would be plenty. They found a couple materials, none of which that were useful at the time, but might be able to help them when Rocky got there. They searched for a while until they eventually searched basically everywhere around the machine, so they split up into twos, one team left the area, one stayed at the teleport spot.

"Hope they get here soon." Rubble said to Chase, as they were the two sent out to search.

"Every one of us does, Rubble, we just don't really show it. Just like we're all afraid of Rico." Chase explained, truthfully.

"Please be okay." Rubble mumbled, looking up into the sky.

"All we have is hope I guess..." Rubble commented, which Chase agreed to.

"I know they will make it here." Chase replied. "None of Rico's monsters are attacking them right now anyway.

"Never know, but I'm confident too." Rubble told Chase.

Chase thought for a second before he finally decided to ask, "So, Rubble, have you noticed that Rico has, changed, since the lost film?"

"That he seems different? Kind of, he doesn't seem to be as angry, or aggressive, he doesn't seem like he cares as much as he did." Rubble answered, which was exactly what Chase was hoping for."

"Over time he stopped talking to us as much too, do you think he might be trying to kill some other people and or pups right now?" Chase asked.

"Possibly, but there is no way to know for sure." Rubble replied, ending he and Chase's little chat.

They talked a little bit after that before they went back to Marshall and Ryder, but not about things as big as that was.

* * *

Really, everyone was afraid, but everyone was also confident. It takes, time for things to happen, and this is a good showing of that.


	4. Two down, when will it end?

Ryder, Chase, Rubble, and Marshall looked around to the point where it became surprising to find a stick. The searched every nook and cranny around the teleporter, and everywhere else on the island felt too dangerous, as Chase found something terrifying around. Chase was just looking around with Marshall when they ventured out a little far and saw a spinning sand tornado, and it was not just one. They were completely surrounding the island they were on, getting anywhere close to them could spell danger in many ways. All they had to do was sit there and hope the three pups came back. The chance of Rico sending monsters at them was still there, but Rico had sent a test ent at them and they were actually able to hatch out a plan using the pup's tools to kill it, and it would probably work on multiples.

"Rico is probably sending all of the ents at the others." Chase explained with a sad tone.

"They could figure out a way to take them out. They aren't stuck in an underground room this time you know." Marshall replied.

"Well... What if... If, they don't? You know? They could, they could get crushed or something, you know?" Chase struggled to find words while thinking about what could happen to the couple and his cockapoo crush.

"Let's try to think of something to do." Rubble interrupted, trying to change the subject.

"Maybe, um..." Marshall couldn't think of anything, so he just sat.

"Maybe we could just, do a questionnaire or something. It doesn't matter what we do as long as it keeps us occupied." Rubble suggested, getting approval from everyone.

"Finally have some time of peace without Rico trying to kill us." Marshall murmured, smiling as he stood on the left side, next to Chase who was in the middle, and Rubble on the right.

Ryder was in front of them ready to ask them questions in a fun style. They weren't doing it for answers to the questions, only for the fun and that is it.

* * *

"So what are the chances of us finding a weak power source over the ent's?" Zuma asked subtly, realizing that he could've thrown that out a bit better.

"Well, theoretically it should be easy considering what Rico would've had to do for the set room we were in. The technology there could give us a weak power source if we could find the source itself and get it out which could be difficult and dangerous, but not as dangerous than trying to kill an ent." Rocky answered.

"That doesn't exactly answer my question, but you're the smart one here."

"I can't go in water as you can though."

"Neither of us can fly either." Zuma joked, looking back at Skye.

"Actually, speaking of flying. Um, Skye, can you fly around and try to find the, erm, metal, tree?" Rocky suggested.

"Sure thing Rocky." Skye replied, then jokingly said. "Just don't do anything weird while I'm gone."

Skye then flew off in search for the "metal" tree.

Zuma then started to say something to Rocky which started a weird chain of mumbly talking and getting cut off over and over. "That wasn't just to-" "No, no, no, it-" "Good beca-" Zuma stopped to let Rocky talk.

"It was just to help us get out of here easier." Rocky replied.

"Thought so. I was just making sure." Zuma responded.

Rocky led Zuma around in looking for the tree, and Zuma was perfectly fine with it. He knew Rocky was much smarter than him, and he also believed Rocky had a lot more leadership skills than he did. If he were leading Rocky, Zuma would've been more serious than he is now, but all he is doing is following him around, so he didn't have much of a role or a reason to be serious in the moment. Both Rocky and Zuma heard Skye call for them, saying she found the tree and that they could come and get... Whatever it was they were trying to get.

When they got to the tree, Rocky found the lever for it and had to use his tools to rip it out of the ground to see what he could get power wise. It didn't have to be much of anything, just something that would be able to power a single use of a teleporter. Which now thinking about it, it seemed like they needed a lot of power, and considering the ent's core was only able to power the teleporter twice but, was able to power a tree. Rocky came to realize that unless he somehow manages to get every bit of power from his place, he won't be able to power the teleporter.

"Hey, uh. I think... I think we're gonna need an ent." Rocky embarrassingly told the pups.

"Why? Didn't you say we just needed a weak source?" Skye asked, confused.

"Yes, I did say that. But, I was, uh... I made a mistake." Rocky explained, still embarrassed.

Zuma walked over to him, put his paw on Rocky's, and comfortingly said, "We all do. Just tell us what we have to do."

This made Rocky much more confident than it seemed like it should have. Although Rocky didn't have the slightest idea on how they were actually going to do, he was basically the leader of the group there and needed to figure out how to get off their island and onto the next. Maybe they didn't even need the teleporter? They could find another way over, anything that would get them with the other pups. Anything that would reunite them without killing anyone. It's not very often when Rocky gets to take charge, and it technically should be Skye in command going by order, but Rocky basically started and plans to finish this.

"We need a power source about a third if the ent's." Rocky explained with much more confidence than he had before, as Zuma made him feel more confident that he thought it should have.

"Where can we find that?" Skye asked, she was basically confused by every single thing going on right now, and although she didn't want to admit it, she was a little confused on Zuma and Rocky's "relationship."

"I don't really know that yet. I'm sure something will come up though. Maybe we'll find an ent as I said."

"Wish as you may little gay. I'm not stupid enough to let my ents come after you at this point. I don't control their movements but I control the island they're on!" Rico explained, finally saying something after quite a while of silence.

"I have two questions for you, Rico. First, where have you been? And second, why do you continuously attempt to insult us with homophobic statements?" Zuma asked, not so happy about Rico's break of silence.

"Questions are not to be asked. Death is what is meant to fall upon you! But you all keep continuously running away, which only, adds, to your misery! Is not that hard to just die! The longer you run, the worst it will be." Rico started, and to a certain extent, he was right, if Ryder and the pups don't escape all the films that is.

"We should just ignore Rico at this point." Rocky suggested, turning away and beginning to walk around.

"Agreed."

Rico tried to talk to them for a bit but they ignored him as they said and he eventually went away. Still, no one understood how Rico could talk to them, hear them, or select groups to speak to, but that was the least of their worries right now. It was still questioned obviously, but the situation they were in made it difficult for such things to matter too much. Through the woods of the island, Skye got a scratch on her front left leg and it made walking a slight bit difficult so she flew around.

"Make sure to stay close to the ground Skye." Rocky explained to her. "Don't want a wasp to come and get you."

"Actually, that's exactly what we want!" Zuma blurted, which confused the two tremendously. "The ents were powered with a core, so what about the wasps?"

"It's possible," Rocky explained

"You okay with risking it, Skye?" Zuma asked, he didn't want to make her do anything, she's gone through so much already in these sick films.

"If it gets us back to the others, it's a risk I'm willing to take." She explained to the two.

"Okay, just, be careful... Okay?" Zuma said to her.

"You know I will Zuma."

"Bring the wasp to me, I have tools to kill it" Rocky explained, Skye approving.

Risks need to be taken sometimes to get anywhere, and this is a big showing if that. Skye had to go up, get one wasp following her and trying not to get any more, and bring it to Rocky so he can kill it. Skye flew up, knowing she had, basically everything in her back. It wasn't normal for any of the pups to have a role to save other pups from an island. Even less common is when there are huge pup-sized wasps that she had to bring to one. She didn't stop though, and she carried in her role.

Skye flew over to the edge of the island where the whole swarm of wasps were and tried to attract one. She ended up getting three and flew back down to try to get them to Rocky. The wasps weren't very fast, so Rocky could probably catch them himself when flying, but the fact that there are three could be a problem for him. She brought them anyway, as there was no going back from what she had begun, to Rocky, who managed to catch one in his claw arm, while the other two still chased Skye. How lucky is it that Skye hurt her leg which made her have to fly, and that's how they got the idea to do this? Never would've expected something like a leg scratch to make such an impact on anything.

The two wasps were no big deal for Skye, her jets were much faster than they were, and they never attacked Rocky when he grabbed the third one. The plan worked out perfectly, and as Rocky riped the wasp apart with his tools, not the most pleased about doing so, they're just so happened to be a power core in there.

"Of course Rico, of course." Rocky muttered, yielding no response as Rico left them a while ago.

"I think we need one more!" Rocky shouted at Skye, causing her to swoop down and allowing Rocky to catch another.

This time, however, both wasps began to attack Rocky, and since he was already holding a wasp, he had basically no way to defend himself. The wasps were slower than expected when looking at them, but they still outspeed Rocky, and as he tried to run the wasp inched closer. The wasp slowly but surely came up behind him, its stinger ready to stab and kill Rocky.

Seconds before Rocky's death by wasp, Skye swooped in and rammed directly into the wasp, causing her and the wasp to go launch forwards. Funny enough, she landed on top of Zuma, and the wasp she ran into was dead on top of the two of them.

"My wings broke. I guess I'll have to walk now." Skye mumbled, noticing her wings were bent and she began limping away.

"I'm sure Rocky will fix it." Zuma told her, hearing what she said.

"Hopefully, the scratch is much worse than I thought." Skye looked at the scratch and it was about half her legs length now, but somehow still not bleeding... Yet.

"Probably got worse after you slammed the wasp. Now go talk to Rocky. He can fix your wings and has probably got the two cores we need."

"Why did Rico put a core into these things in the first place?" Skye asked, it was just another thing she was confused about.

"Probably convenience, or strength or something like that. I honestly dunno."

"You can never know anything when it comes to Rico." Skye said, ending her and Zuma's short little chat as they went up to Rocky.

The two wasps were lying on the ground all cut up to the inside so Rocky could get the core. Rocky was standing there in mild disgust looking at the skeevy scene in front of him, it was only slightly repulsive for him though. He held onto the cores with his claw and waited for Skye and Zuma to get over to him. Skye flew a lot further away than Rocky thought after she ran into the wasp, and she also had that scratch in her leg, he was just hoping it didn't grow too big or hurt to where she couldn't walk.

"Got them, Rocky?" Skye asked, getting to where Rocky was.

"Yep. Just gotta put them in the teleporter and we should be good." Rocky explained, looking over at Zuma who just now came up behind Skye.

"Well then let's go!"

And so they did, they went over to the teleporter. Although they kinda forgot where it was at exactly so they had to look around a bit for it. It definitely wasn't the most pleasant trip for Skye, her scratch had grown a lot in that crash with the wasp and it starts bleeding before they entered the island's forest, and she forgot to ask Rocky to fix her wing so she had to walk the whole way.

"Both are in now. All we have to do is go in, press the button, and we should get there." Rocky explained as he put the second core into the teleporter, and they fit surprisingly well since they were smaller than the ent's core was.

The three of them got into the teleporter, pressed the button, and sure enough, it worked. It took a few seconds for any of the pups to see them, as they were still doing the questionnaire.

"They're here!" Chase shouted, running over and tackling Skye into a hug.

"Yes, Chase. We're back." Skye said, giggling at Chase's tackle hug. "But can you please get off. I have a scratch on my leg."

"Oh, uh... S-sorry, Skye." He studdered as be back off of Skye.

"Need help with that?" Marshall asked, walking over to Skye and sitting down with her.

"Yeah, thanks."

While Marshall was with Skye, Rocky and Zuma began walking towards the group of pups.

"I leave you all for five minutes and now these two are here. How the fuck did you escape that island?" Rico shouted at them.

"You don't even know what's happening in your own movie. Great director you are." Zuma responded.

"Shut the hell up. It's not easy when the movie isn't exactly scripted." Rico replied, beginning to sound angrier at them.

"Maybe you should script your movies instead of just throwing us in here," Zuma replied, trying to purposefully activate Rico to see if they could get something out of him.

"Its fun not knowing what's going to happen. It's like I'm actually watching my own movies and deciding the end results. It's much more effective than it seems on paper." Rico explained, trying to calm himself down before he messes something up.

"So is love but here you are and here we are." Zuma shot, and he realized that he admittedly went a bit too far on that one, but he wanted to get Rico back for everything he'd done so far.

"You know what you gay labrador? Fuck you. Get ready for a surprise that will make you regret that immediately." Rico replied, sounding angrier than Zuma was during any of his breakouts.

"Whataya gonna do to me? You know we can take out any of the stuff you send at us." Zuma questioned Rico, not exactly afraid of what he was gonna do.

"Remember when I said I couldn't control the ents? I lied." Rico replied, confusing them all at first.

Before anyone could say anything, an ent appeared out of the woods, picked up Zuma unexpectedly, and threw him straight up into the air, and landing him in a wasp.

"I can also control the wasps." Rico laughed, and all the other pups were terrified. "Let's take you somewhere that will make me happy."

"What... What will... What are you gonna do, to him?" Rubble managed to mutter within all of the emotions inside him and everyone else.

"You'll find out soon enough. I'll just tell you he will be alive."

Zuma went from fearless to absolutely terrified in a matter of seconds. He had no idea what was happening, what was going to happen, or what the other would be thinking. Especially Rocky, they got together the same day, and Zuma was already being taken away from him and he had no way of knowing what would happen to him. Zuma didn't say anything, mostly because he couldn't out of regret, and fear. The only fear that truly exists is the fear of the unknown, and every fear just branches of off that for fearing the unknown of something specific. Right now, there were no branches.

The pups just watched as the wasp flew Zuma away to nowhere the pups knew, except one pup didn't watch. Rocky was just lying on the ground with his face buried in his paws, most likely crying but no one clecked as they just watched Zuma fly away on a wasp.

"Can you all stop staring and move on? I have something big planned!" Rico blurted.

"I guess, the further we get, the sooner we see Zuma?" Marshall exclaimed, realizing staring won't do anything.

"We just have to move on I guess, even if we don't want to." Chase replied, which got the point to all the pups and Ryder as they looked around to where they could go since there were "sandstorms" around the place.

Rocky slowly stood up and had his head hanging for a bit, and Ryder nor the pups could blame him. He put his head up before they went out though since it would be hard to traverse the woods bit your head hanging. Marshall managed to help Skye, but Rocky didn't want to risk needing help in the first place so he just watched himself, simple.

"We probably need to get to another island. The last time Rico wanted us to get here, so the movie has more to it. Now it seems like he doesn't though." Chase explained, which didn't really need explaining.

"How do we get anywhere from here?" Marshall asked.

"You don't." Rico answered. "You just wait, and I'll give you a way out. Death."

"We've survived everything you've sent at us. Why do you continue to believe that everything you send will kill us?" Chase questioned, confident they could get out of this.

"Remeber when the ents all ran away from you? Remember how I told you I could control the ents?" Rico asked them.

"Yeah?"

"You know how they all have there own cores?"

"Just get on with it."

"I think I know where he's going with this." Ryder explained, slightly nervously.

"What?" Skye asked, her not having a clue where Rico was going with it.

"We might want to get back to that open space where the teleporter brought us." Ryder explained, which go them all running, through the carrion, blood, body parts and organs all over the ground to the place they first were on this island.

When they got there, Rubble asked, "Why did we come here?"

"You'll find out in three..." Rico started.

"Oh no."

"Two."

"Prepare everyone!" Chase shouted he didn't know what was coming but judging by Ryder's most likely life-saving decision to come back to the open space, it was gonna be big.

"One."

"Here it comes!"

"Zero. Time to die!"

They were all slightly spread about in the open field, the ground shook, the pups looked around, but soon stopped due to the sheer force of the shakes. The shaking of the ground got steadily louder, but keeping from the same direction, combined with the synchronized delay between shakes proved there was only one huge thing coming for them. As the shaking grew, the pups began to bounce up a little bit, proving the size of this thing must be towering. Slowly... Slowly did it approach, but no matter how slow it went, it still approached, in terrifying fashion. Then, all at once, the shaking stopped, giving the pups a split second to look up and see what it was that so slowly approached them. They didn't have much time before it jumped in the air and landed directly in the middle of the place.

There it stood, in the middle of the field. A seemingly 200 ft ent, ready to squash each and every one of them with a single stomp.

"We should run." Chase blurted as he instantaneously turned around and began to run away, the rest of the pups following behind him.

Running would prove to be almost useless as the ground shaking, and the size of the thing making it seem fast, altogether gave running no use.

The ent was chasing Chase, and he was not going to be able to get away. Chase tried everything in his power to escape from the ent, but no dice. It slowly but surely approached Chase and despite his best efforts, it was going to get him.

* * *

"Okay, everyone, Chase is all alone with a hundred foot ent chasing him, what do we do?" Ryder paced around, desperately thinking.

The shaking was still happening by them, but it was, much smaller scale and enough for them to have some concentration.

"We need to hit it, stun it, stall it something, but how?" Marshall said, thinking as desperately as Ryder.

"Skye." Was Rocky's first words since Zuma's, subtle, disappearance, and it had a lot of meaning to it despite it being the only female pup's name.

"My wings are broken, how could we fix them in time?" Skye asked, now tremendously regretting not telling him before.

"I can do it. Trust me, Skye." Rocky answered, barking out his tools and walking over to Skye.

He had to work faster than he ever had before. Chase's life was on the line, and he didn't even know if this was going to work in the first place, but he didn't have any other ideas and had no time to think of any others. Faster than he thought he had ever gone before, he fixed Skye's wings, amd she flew off towards the ent. The problem with being so big is that you can hide from anything, Skye was able to immediately find the thing.

She flew over to it, swooped over to the front, and hit it where the core would be. It made it flinch just enough for Chase to not only get away but he also put his own life, to save who just saved him. Skye was lying on the ground after the crash, and Chase managed to pick her up and hide her away along with himself. The ent stomped around them, and they both just sat and waited for it to get far enough away for them to get out of hiding and get to the others. Skye told Chase where the others were, and she went with him on two way there.

After a while, they were roaming around and eventually were spotted by the ent again. Skye was a bit behind Chase, so the ent only saw her, and she would be the last thing it saw. Rocky managed to put together something that could not only kill the ent, but also could manage its way to the core to ensure its death. All of the searching they did earlier finally paid off as Rocky took all of it and made a device to kill the ent. It was thrown at the ent by Rubble, and Chase was able to react extremely quickly and shoot his net at it to get it on the core and kill the ent off. Chase was not originally a part of the plan either, he just had an extremely fast reaction, and also presumed that it was made to kill the ent since he saw Rubble throw it.

With the ent dead, the core flew out as it slammed the ground and it turned into the portal. They didn't step in the portal, however, as Skye's legs were stuck under the fallen ent, most likely broken or something from the impact. Skye had been hurt so many more times than the others, it almost makes her feel like she's really being targeted, maybe just for her being a female? She didn't know for sure, but she felt it.

The pups ran over to her and she was crying as her tiny little legs managed to get stuck underneath the dead ent. They had to make a huge team effort but they eventually got her out and had Marshall check her.

"Yeah, that's definitely broken, and even a bit flattened, you definitely won't be able to walk for a long, time." Marshall explained, reluctantly.

"Well, we can't stay here for so long of a time, we've gotta go." Chase explained, going towards the portal.

"Ain't that swell, you all killed it. Now get in the portal and continue your pathetic excuse for a damn performance." Rico exclaimed, feeling like a bit of a delayed reaction. "At least we have tears and some suffering. She can do it, why can't you all?"

"You're gonna have to fly for the rest of this all, Skye." Chase told her.

"I know, I just wanna lay a bit." Skye replied, tears still dripping down her eyes.

"Let her stay, she needs a bit." Marshall responded, still sitting by her, just in case.

When Skye finally barked her jets out, they all went into the portal to the next movie, all but one. Zuma.

-Island of despair - Rico Winter


	5. Here we go again

Second one down, who knows how many to go. That was basically every one of the pup's and Ryder's thoughts while going through the portal. The portal ride taking them from one film to another only lasted seconds, but the combination of blue and purple and electricity surging through it gave it the strangest feeling while going through. They were entirely conscious while going through, but they had no feeling of their bodies. It felt like, they were ghosts in a sense, not being able to feel yourself, or control anything, but they still had consciousness and things going through there mind.

When the portal dropped them down, they were inside of a building, and the entrance door was right in front of them but it didn't budge. There were two hallways on each side with a few rooms in each. There was also a staircase behind them, leading upstairs.

"Hospital." Marshall told them.

"What?" Rubble questioned.

"We're in a hospital. An abandoned one at that." Marshall re-explained.

"That's right. This set wasn't created specifically for this movie. We found an abandoned hospital and seized the opportunity." Rico explained, with a much different tone of voice then he had before.

"Hey, Marshall." Chase called out.

"What is it, Chase?"

"Are these safe to drink?" Chase asked, pointing his paw at a red potion like drink sitting on a table.

"Looking at it, safe, probably. The effects I'm unsure." Marshall explained.

"There are different colors of these around too." Chase said, noticing a yellow on another table.

"Ah yes, the potions. You know I once put another pup through this movie. I put her in here all alone. Actually, no, she had an older pup with her. She's dead now, so is the other one, and she knew too much." Rico commented, sounding surprisingly relaxed.

"Anyone want to drink one? To see what happens?" Chase asked, honestly afraid to do it himself.

"I'll do it." Rocky mumbled, he wanted to get out in any way possible, for Zuma.

"Well, uh, okay then. Umm, which one you taking?" Chase replied, confused as to why Rocky would want to do this.

"I'm not sure about that Rocky." Ryder told, concerned.

"I can make my own decisions Ryder." Rocky responded, grabbing the potion with his claw.

Rocky opened the bottle with his paw and took a drink of it. It took a couple seconds for the effect to start, but the effect was of what no one expected. Rocky was transmogrified into a different animal, a bat. He couldn't talk, and could only squeak.

"Uh, umm... Okay. How do we turn him back?" Chase stuttered.

"Give him another red one?" Skye suggested.

"Where is another red one?" Rubble asked, looking around but finding nothing.

"We'll just have to find one." Ryder answered. "It can't be that hard."

"Unless Rico put only one in here. Because he's Rico." Chase remarked.

"How do you stereotype myself to myself?" Rico asked, normally speaking for once.

"How don't you?" Chase responded, seeing what fun he could get from Rico.

"You can't stereotype the stereotype, your just re-stereotyping." Rico explained, still normal.

"That's a lot of stereotyping." Skye joked, now as well trying to get even the slightest bit of humor out of Rico.

"A lot of stereotyping is my life." Rico replied.

"We should go find that potion now," Marshall suggested.

"Maybe being a bat isn't so bad. Besides, you have no way of knowing if he likes it or not." Rico told, differently.

Ryder and the pups completely ignored Rico this time and walked down the hall to their left. There were two rooms, one on both walls. They went into the one on the right wall and found only a green potion. When they went into the left one, they opened a cabinet that was in there and there was a purple and a red potion.

"How are we going to fe- uh, have him drink it?" Skye questioned, just realizing he couldn't hold it himself.

"I'll have to give it to him." Ryder answered, picking up the bottle and opening it.

"Alright Rocky, here you go. Hopefully." Ryder said, holding the bottle up to bat Rocky's mouth and pouring it in.

The delay in the effect was a bit longer this time than last time, but Rocky transformed back into his original pup self, without a pup pack, or hat, or clothes.

"Yeah, they fell off when I turned into the bat." Rocky laughed, seemingly not phased at himself just being an entirely different species.

"We might want to go get them," Ryder suggested.

"Good luck with that." Rico told them, "Try to find them."

"What did you do with my stuff?" Rocky asked, "Why, did you take my stuff?"

"I didn't do anything. I just had a friend do it." Rico replied, "We wanted the pup pack. You could do too much with it. The clothes were just there as an opportunity to ever so slightly embarrass you, just to add a fun factor."

"Fun for who?"

"Whoever wants."

Rocky didn't take much notice though. The missing pup pack was an issue though, now only Ryder could pick things up.

"So, plans?" Chase looked around.

"If Rocky had his pup pack be could just dig out," Skye said, referring as he could eventually drill through.

"No. The place is probably unstable as its abandoned. One wall could collapse anything. You never know." Rocky told her.

"That also makes us pretty vulnerable." Chase supported.

"At the same time we have no idea what's out there, and Rico could surround us in that regard." Marshall added.

They just sat in that room for a while, since there was no point in leaving if they were only trying to think about what to do. They've come to realize that just thinking isn't really going to do much, they had to actually look around to find things or ways out.

"Anybody going to try out the other potions?" Chase questioned, looking around to find no one volunteering.

"Well. I guess I'll have to do it. Give me the purple one, Ryder." Chase said, causing Ryder to stand up grab the purple potion and open it.

"Ready Chase?" Ryder asked before getting Chase to drink it.

"Yes."

Ryder slowly poured the portion into Chase's mouth and waited for an effect. The purple one didn't take as long as the red, and Chase was transformed into... Nothing, but Chase fainted.

"Oh no."

"Don't worry. He'll wake up in a couple minutes." Marshall reassured, calming everyone down.

"What happened?" Skye asked, now calmed.

"The drink knocked him out. It's probably only a felt effect rather than a transformation." Marshall explained.

"So, he's going- okay?" Rubble asked, beginning to get curious about the effects of all the potions.

"Why does matter if he's okay? You are all going to die anyway. In the movie, out of the movie, either way, you're dead." Rico explained, "I think this might be a good moment for you Rocky. I'm sure you want to just go over and get-"

"Don't finish that." Rocky interrupted, now beginning to feel embarrassed.

Rico let out a low laugh and asked, "Why? Because you don't want your friends hearing about your erotic desires?"

"No... It's because I don't have them." Rocky defended.

"Sure. I'll believe that the pup more focused on his lack of clothes than his change in species, which is also the one with the gay relationship, who-"

"Okay, okay, I get it... Just... D-don't immediately jump to conclusions." Rocky again interrupted, more embarrassed than before.

"Heh, it seems like you're all but caught. Admit to it."

"I can't admit to something that's not true."

"I'll be honest here. I've actually done you a favor by talking about this. Not only did I get the secret out, but I also saved Chase. If you would have moved him, he would've died." Rico explained, "Really I just wanted a better death scene than a drink to death. Bringing him back would just be a waste. And a bit of embarrassment to you, that's always fun."

Chase woke up directly after Rico spoke, and needed help getting on all four paws. He stood there, feeling nauseated and having trouble standing. Marshall and Rocky had to be on each side of him to keep him from falling, as they were the two biggest. Chase wabbled there for a while until he finally stopped and was able to get himself to normal consciousness.

"I- I feel... I can- can see... This is-is-is weird." Chase stammered after coming to reality.

"What is it?" Rubble asked, concerned and curious.

"My vision, is, wobbly, and purple. But I can see through things when I'm close..." Chase explained, stumbling around with Marshall and Rocky still at his sides.

"Take it easy Chase. Get used to it." Marshall told him, slowly backing away from him in sync with Rocky.

Chase had some stumbling, but he never fell over. He was eventually able to figure out how to walk around with the wobbly vision, and not being able to see the ground he was standing on when he looked down rather the basement below them. He couldn't see what was right in front of him as he saw through everything he came close too. All but living things. Ryder and the pups were always perfectly visible, save for them all being purple and wobbly of course. It felt super weird to just walk over to a cabinet and have it slowly disappear in front of your eyes. The object didn't disappear altogether either, rather as he got closer the pieces of the object vanished so he could see half of an object if he got the right distance.

"This... This is going to take, some... Adjusting." Chase said, slowly walking around to try to actually grasp a way to walk without constantly tripping over himself.

"Is this a good or a bad thing?" Rubble questioned, as Chase could barely walk, but could also see through things as pros and cons.

"Depends on what it could be used for. As in what could be behind some walls." Marshall explained.

"Well... I don't like it... That's for sure." Chase commented, now just standing in place.

"This is gonna be fun to watch. Just fall on some glass or something and I'd love that." Rico said, but not laughing afterward as he usually did.

"I think we should leave this room now. We aren't accomplishing anything here." Rocky explained just wanting to be out of all of this, obviously.

"I would love for you to leave this room. I could finally send my monsters at you! All in good fun, especially when you die." Rico added, still not laughing afterward.

"We don't have a choice." Skye responded, both to Rico and Rocky.

"Let's go then."

Ryder opened the door, and there was nothing on the other side. Rico hadn't sent the monsters yet it seemed like, although he heard sounds coming from the other hallway.

"Where are we gonna go, Ryder?" Rubble asked, not hearing the sounds from the other hallway.

"We're gonna have to go down this hallway." Ryder explained, trying to get all the pups in the same place before they go.

"Alright, let's go then."

Ryder opened the door, with all the pups right behind him, and started walking down the hall. He didn't run, as he didn't know what could be around and what could hear him. It was best to just play it safe. It was a bit difficult to be quiet when there were twenty-two legs on the same floor, but they tried.

At the end of the hallway were some stairs going down to, seemingly the basement. They were either to go down into the basement or go towards the sounds from the other hallway.

"You know what the sounds- ugh, here I'll even tell you. They're doctors. Evil, doctors. Plagued, you'd say." Rico commented.

"Doctors in a hospital. How original." Rocky said in an annoyed tone.

"The damn movies aren't supposed to be original, just realistic. And think I'm doing a good job with that." Rico explained, still yet to laugh, not in character of Rico.

"Not when there are living trees and zombies." Rocky retorted.

"The gore is supposed to be realistic. That's the whole reason I have a successful career."

"So are we just going to sit here or what?" Skye asked.

"We don't have much of a choice but to go in the basement." Marshall claimed, he was scared to go down, but he knew it was their only chance.

"Welp, here it goes." Rocky said, being the first to take a step down the surprisingly long flight of stairs.

"We'll be right behind you Rocky." Skye told although they didn't really have much of a choice.

At the bottom of the stairs was a room full of operation beds with no one on them. There were curtains to cover some of the beds, and some had tools on them. Before they comprehend this though, Chase fell down the stairs and knocked everyone down like dominos. Except for Ryder, who was behind him.

"What do we do from here?" Rubble asked after everyone got up from Chase's fall.

"You hurt Chase?" Marshall asked him.

"A bit... But it's not bad." Chase responded truthfully.

"So, uh. What now?" Marshall questioned, becoming increasingly nervous.

"I don't know. I don't see anywhere we can go." Skye answered, now becoming increasingly nervous as Marshall was.

"W-we're stuck here?" Rubble studdered, now believing there was no escape.

"There has to be something!" Ryder exclaimed frantically.

"I... See nothing." Chase added, looking around at every wall and everyplace he could.

"This is it!" Skye cried as the doctors began stepping down the last few steps.

"Just huddle up, and let it happen. It will end better that way." Rocky explained, head hanging and tears slowly rolling down his eyes.

"We can't give up!" Ryder shouted as the doctors took their final steps down the stairs.

"Ryder. There are killer doctors standing right there and we've looked in every place down here. It's... It's over." Rocky explained, more tears in his eyes and all the pups huddled around him as he said for them to do.

"I- We can't just-"

"You're just making it worse on yourself." Rocky told him, which caused Ryder to finally get in the middle of the circle of pups, and cried, cried like every one of the pups.

They all sat there, crying waiting for each of their deaths. The doctors came towards them all at a speed slower than they had gone before, just to make it that little bit worse. The comfort of each other as the doctors slowly and inevitably closed in on them helped them stay just that little bit happier even when knowing that they were going to die at any second. They all had tears rolling down their faces, but none of them made any sounds, none of them even looked at each other, just comforted each other.

But, you know, the doctors made quite a mistake with going so slow towards Ryder and the pups. Because, mysteriously, a female White Shepard Zuma's size popped out of seemingly nowhere with a yellow potion and threw it at the doctors. The potion had almost zero delays before it activated and turned them each into rats, and caused them all to scatter around.

"You just... You just saved us! Every single one of us!" Marshall cheered as all of them came to the realization that a random pup just saved each and every one of their lives.

"I noticed." She responded in her deep, but still feminine voice.

"So, who are you?" Rubble asked, still confused but overjoyed at what happened.

"My name is Zuzi, and I was put in this movie a-a while ago." She replied, "Rico thought I was dead. I-I've been hiding for-for a long time."

"Where?" Skye asked after realizing that she came from beside them, and Chase looked there.

"Hehe, I, uh, I came from a-a hole I dug in-in-in the wall." Zuzi answered, and showing them that she had quite a studdering problem.

"How come... I didn't see it?... I can see through walls... I drank a purple potion." Chase asked he knew he looked at every wall she could've come from.

"I probably just dug it, um, too far from the, uh, core wall, I-I guess." She replied, now showing that her studdering was just a natural thing for her, although Ryder nor the pups took any notice.

"Why, the hell, are you there?" Rico shouted, which caused them to realize they he said nothing as they were about to die, which was weird.

"I faked my death. I managed to dig an, um, a hole, and hid in there." Zuzi told him, staring upward.

"How did you manage to dig a hole through pure stone?" Rico questioned.

"Your, um, your potions, uh, have, one of your potion's effects is an-an explosion if-if you throw it. I used that quite a bit." Zuzi answered, still looking up when she talked to him.

"I'm really bad at planning." Rico admitted, quieting his voice.

Zuzi just giggled a little, sounding surprisingly happy though she was stuck there for... However long she was there.

"So what are all of your names?" Zuzi asked, surprisingly not studdering at all.

"Okay, my name is Rocky, the one who drank the purple potion is Chase, the red one is Marshall, yellow, Rubble, and pink, Skye." Rocky explained, which he thought was confusing but she seemed to get it just fine. "Oh, and this is Ryder, our leader."

"Okay, um, why do they, uh, why do they have suits and stuff and-and you don't?" Zuzi asked Rocky, now knowing that they were all on a team.

"Rico took mine. Or had someone take mine rather." Rocky explained, rolling his eyes.

"Why? Uhh..." Zuzi asked, ready to say something else but decided not to.

"Not a clue." Rocky responded.

While they left that, "basement" Zuzi began chatting just a little bit to each of the pups to try to get to know them a slight bit more. You don't really want to be hanging around with five pups you don't even know, do you? She seemed to bond best with Rocky, mostly because of their surprisingly similar... "Smarts" I guess. Zuzi was an American pup from South Dakota, meaning she had quite a long way to go to get to Rico's theater in the first place. Zuzi had made Rocky feel a bit better about Zuma's "disappearance" but, he didn't think that would last long as he thought that it was just because it's a new person he had never meet before, and funny how her name was very similar to Zuma's.

The doctors were gone, and for now, it seemed like Rico didn't have anything to send at them. They had a new pup with them, and they were in a pretty small area. It seemed like they would make it out easy.

But you never know with Rico... No one ever has.


	6. One won, but one lost

At the moment, they all were just looking around the hospital. The basement, the basement on the other side, and the hallways. They found nothing though, nothing that would help them out at least. There were potions and stuff but they didn't worry about those anymore, even if they needed one Zuzi knew all about them anyway. There was one place they never tried didn't go to, and that was upstairs. Chase looked at every wall and there was nothing in any of them. So it was they obvious that they had to go upstairs.

"I might have trouble... Walking upstairs." Chase explained, he still had trouble with stairs with his crazy vision.

"We'll help you up." Ryder replied, lightly holding Chase.

Rocky, Skye, and Ryder slowly walked up at the speed Chase went. It wasn't as big of a deal as it'd seem like it was if you looked at it without knowing the situation, but if you couldn't see what you were stepping on it would be hard to go up, so they helped him. Zuzi, Rubble, and Marshall walked beside them while they went up, the stairs were pretty big so they all fit.

"Take your time, Chase." Skye told him.

"We've built patience with Rico now anyway." Rubble joked although it was partially truthful.

It was two flights of about twenty-five or so stairs. You walked up one flight and the other flight was on a turn, as usual. They slowly but surely walked up the stairs, helping Chase every step of the way. It took more time than it had to, but they wanted to be sure Chase didn't fall.

"We made it." Marshall said when they got to the top of the stairs.

Ryder, Skye, and Rocky let go of Chase and got back into the little group they had before.

"This place is a-a loop." Zuzi explained, "This upstairs area loops around."

"How will this help us out then?" Skye questioned.

"We'll probably have to- have to have you... look through every w-wall for an exit." Zuzi expanded, looking over at Chase.

"Anyone notice that Rico hasn't said anything for a while." Marshall told, he hadn't talked since Zuzi appeared.

"Yeah, it's been a while." Rubble said.

"Whatever he's doing at least he's not killing us." Skye replied.

"He could maybe have other people as well." Ryder told, which added a new fear element.

"It's possible for him to have an... Uh, more people or pups but it's unlikely considering the-the things he-he has to do for them." Zuzi explained, entirely calm really.

"He could also be hurting Zuma." Rocky mumbled to himself, pretty much terrified for Zuma.

"He can't just leave us can he?" Rocky questioned.

"He has before." Chase responded, Rico had seemingly disappeared a couple times.

"Probably went back to t-the drawing board in how t-to kill us." Zuzi joked.

"Okay, I think we need to get Chase to look at the walls now." Ryder exclaimed.

"We should probably do that before Rico sends things at us." Rocky added, knowing that if Rico saw their attempt attempts to escape he would stop them.

So they did. They all walked around and let Chase look around through every wall they could find. He didn't see anything. One hall, nothing but a room next hall, same thing, and the next hall, the same thing. Only one hall remained for him to look through, and, of course, because Rico, one place seemed to have a room, or an exit or something on the other side. Whatever was it, it was not an open wall, it was an open space.

"I see something... Through this one." Chase told excitedly.

"What is it?" Rubble asked now excited too.

"I don't know but its open." He replied.

"How do we get through?" Skye questioned excited and nervous at the same time.

"Use the potions." Zuzi suggested, "Blow up- blow up the wall and-and fly-fly in there with a bat, or something."

"We could check out the rooms up here." Ryder suggested.

"Which ones need to be mixed for an explosion?" Marshall asked.

"Green and Orange."

"You're really smart aren't you?" Rocky whispered to Zuzi, who he had been walking beside the whole time.

"I'm often told I am. I-I-I-I really dunno, though, um." She truthfully replied.

"I'll be the next to say it, you are." Rocky told her.

"Oh boy." Zuzi said but in an odd sounding kid-like voice and giggled afterward, "That was my first compliment in a while. Bet you're just honored."

"You're welcome then." Rocky replied, knowing the joke in what she said.

"It's... It's fun to have others too- Here, even given the circum-circumstances." Zuzi happily explained.

"I can tell you like joking around and having fun," Rocky told.

"Hehe, yeah."

Room number one, not a green or an orange, but the second one had both and they had Zuzi mix them together. They found something though, it was one of the audio recordings, like the ones they found in the other two movies.

* * *

 _"I've always constantly tried and tried to be the nice guy in life. All around me are people, pups, and all of the other that live lives. They live lives as much as I, and you do, so I try to give them a good one as I want mine. Do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you, If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, if they aren't bothering you, don't bother them. I try to follow all of these."_ Rico's voice started.

 _"Everybody slips up sometimes and I've had a fair share of bad moments, but I've followed these rules quite well. I'm pretty well known around the place for being so nice. I'm normally not out and about though, I like just sitting at home and doing what I want. Whenever I leave though people often come to me for things. I don't really mind it, as I said I like helping people."_

 _"One time, though I was... Manipulated from my niceness. Some pup was always indirectly using me for his own gains. I don't really want to detail it, mostly because I don't remember much of it. The thing that made this story stick with me was that after it all what I was told was that aggression is all that gets you anywhere and he went off."_

 _"It almost seemed true as well. He seemed to have a lot while I seemed to not live in the best life. Many things haven't gone my way but you know what? If it's so bad to be so good... Then send me to hell."_

* * *

"How do- how do you go from-from nicest guy in the city to m-maniacal killer trick-tricking people into dying for his movies?" Zuzi questioned a bit jokingly and with a tone of it.

"No one knows, Zuzi." Marshall replied to her.

"Rico probably does." Zuzi joked as she does.

"Okay, well, we should probably get these potions now," Ryder suggested.

"Gimme-gimme the potions so I can... Mix them." Zuzi replied.

Ryder went to grab the orange and green potions for Zuzi. He grabbed them both and put them in front of Zuzi so she could do her thing. Marshall was right in front of her while she did it, and confused out of his mind. They were all confused. It seemed like it'd be a simple process of just taking one and pouring it into the other, but that's not what she did. When she finished they all just went on and followed Ryder. Except for Marshall who just stared at her for a bit, looking confused. When they left he went with them though.

"You don't have to stand that far back. Just be... A-a bit away." Zuzi explained, and they all obeyed.

"How far?" Rocky asked her.

"Just be where I'm at." She said, backing up just a bit.

"Throw it at the corner of the wall." Zuzi said to Ryder.

"Alright." He responded, closing one eye and tossing the potion.

They all flinched a bit but Zuzi, she just stood there and stared. Once the explosion went off she told them to go get a red potion and fly in there as a bat since Skye wouldn't be able to fit.

"I think I'll stay here with her just in case." Marshall told, walking over to Zuzi.

"I will too." Rocky also told, walking over to her with Marshall.

"Okay then." Skye said, "I don't think we'll have to go far for a potion though."

"Better safe than sorry Skye." Rocky told her, putting his front paws together on the ground.

"Okay then." Skye replied, and they went off.

"What are you- are you guys... Doing?" Zuzi asked, having Rocky to her left and Marshall to her right.

"We're just sitting back here." Rocky replied.

"Why?"

"I said before, better safe than sorry." Rocky answered.

"That's... That's not the-the-the reason." Zuzi replied, rolling her eyes a bit.

"Okay, really I just wanted to hang out with my new friend." Rocky told her, rapping his paw around her a bit.

"Aight but uh, what about you." Zuzi questioned, looking over at Marshall.

Marshall was just zoned out though. He was just, starting at nothing. He was looking up a bit but just starting off and showing no signs that he even heard Zuzi's voice. She just went back to Rocky after seeing him like that.

"O-o-okay then. Does he- does he do this often?" She asked Rocky, looking back at Rocky now.

"I dunno if I've ever seen him do this." Rocky replied, now taking his paw from around Zuzi.

"Huh, that's, odd- uh, strange."

"Yeah. So it's sorta just me and you." Rocky responded, looking down the hallway in front of him.

"They're gonna be- gonna be back soon." Zuzi told him, looking at him rather than down the hall like he was.

"I just wanna spend as much time with you as I can. You made me feel better about something that happened before. Rico did something to me that I really don't feel like talking about right now, but. I just feel a little better having you around. As a new pup and friend in everything." Rocky explained to Zuzi, looking a bit down now.

"O-okay then." Zuzi responded, "You good now though, yeah?"

"Yeah. Don't know how long it will last though." Rocky told her.

"As long as I want it too." She said to him, then whacking him on the back with her paw.

"Ay! Why'd you do that?" Rocky asked, sounding a bit annoyed but not to the point of anything serious.

"Fun."

She doesn't seem to stutter much if at all on the smaller simpler sentences. She stuttered a lot more at first but probably because of nerves or something like that. She just happened to stutter a lot, or that's what it seemed like. Hopefully, she would live through it all along with the others and leave with them too.

"Oh. Eh, I'm back." Marshall suddenly muttered to them.

"Where'd you go?" Zuzi joked, "I'd like to go a lot of places right now."

"Just my thoughts." Marshall told her, "Just thinking about what's going to happen here, I just zoned out really."

"Well aight, I won't a-ask anything." Zuzi told Marshall.

That's when Ryder and the other pups came back, Ryder holding the red potion. Zuzi along with the other two with her stopped talking when they noticed them coming, all of them thankfully.

"Oh hey, guys." Zuzi told at them as they came towards them.

"Hey. We've got the potion." Ryder told her.

"What a- oh yeah, d- um, now have someone drink it and-and-and go through the, um, the crack." She replied, it was something they already knew of course but that was pretty much the indicator for them to do it now.

They elected for Rocky to be the one to drink it. They chose him because he was already a bat before and none of the other pups wanted to try it out. Ryder had to do it for him as per usual, and with the small delay and all Rocky was a bat. A normal bat I will add, he didn't look special or anything because he wasn't really a bat and that he was a pup, he just looked like a normal bat. He sounded just like one too. No pup sounds, couldn't speak, nothing, he was just a bat and that's it. It's much. It'd seem like if you just grew wings it'd be difficult to learn how to fly at first, and it would be, but Bat Rocky already had the mindset on how to fly apparently, potion must be given it too him upon becoming the bat.

Rocky flew through the hole they had made which got progressively smaller as he went through it for the about one-and-a-half seconds it took for him to fly through, and on the other side, as Chase had said, was a room. It seemed like just an empty room. It had some messed up walls and there was dust all around, likely something Rico whipped up to test things or something, all it was is that it was probably for Rico. Though if it was for Rico, there'd have to be an exit right? If Rico were to have been here then he would have to be able to get out. There's no way this was from the original hospital, it just branches out and seems to serve no purpose. A lot of the room was battered actually, so someone was here, and someone had to have gotten out. There was a blue potion, and a pipe, a pipe in the wall. Growing ever more suspicious of this being a room of Rico's. Who in the right mind puts a pipe in a random wall in a hospital? Rico, that's who. It was a water pipe, no idea of the use So it's pretty much confirmed this was a room of Rico's.

Rocky came back out if the hole they didn't actually have to go get another potion, as Ryder only poured half of it. The other half was still in the bottle and it was used to bring Rocky back to normal.

"How were you able to figure out so much about the potions when there are so little of them?" Marshall asked Zuzi.

"Rico re- replenishes them." She replied a pretty simple response, not what was expected but whatever it was.

Rocky then told them all of what he knew and saw of the room behind the wall. The fact he thought it was Rico's, the water pipe, etc. He told it mostly to Zuzi, as she seemed to have an odd amount of knowledge on Rico and what he could be up to all the time.

"It might be- it might be a room to test the potions." She replied, "B-blue makes you a fish and there's a- there's a water pipe. It could be a trap but Rico is just stupid."

"So might that be our way out?" Rubble asked as he was just confused as to what was going on at this point.

"Might be our-our only shot, really." She responded with a bit of uncertainty.

"So we're becoming fish and going down the pipe?" Marshall questioned, concerned really.

"Yes. Yes, we are." Zuzi told him with a bit of sovereignty, although not intentional.

"How are we all... Going to... Get in there?" Chase questioned.

"We're all becoming bats I guess." Zuzi told them, "The po- the potions just need to be s-sipped for an,"

They decided to have the same pups back, mostly just because the three of them wanted to stay back but it was the same no matter how. Marshall, Rocky, and Zuzi staying behind.

"You gonna stay here this time?" Zuzi joked at Marshall.

"Yeah, I think so." Marshall replied, smiling a bit.

"Okay. So, l-like I was gonna ask you before, why are you here? Er, why do you wanna stay back here." She asked him.

"I don't know honestly. I just felt like I had to I guess." Marshall told her, strange response but it was what it was.

"I- uh- okay." She responded, although having not a clue what to actually respond with.

Rocky wanted to get a little bit of fun revenge on Zuzi, so he slapped her on the back with his paw as she had done to him. Marshall didn't see when Zuzi did it though so he had no idea.

"Oi!" She lightly blurted directly after the hit.

"You did it to me." Rocky explained, which now have Marshall the context he really needed.

"I didn't do it that hard. And you're bigger than I am." She complained, joking though.

"Barely." Rocky told her,

"Shut up." She joked with a faint giggle.

"You good?" Marshall asked, not entirely seriously.

"Not at all." She replied, although they both could tell she was joking as she always does, "I will find you. And I will kill you."

"You're coming with us and I'm right here." Rocky told her, and looking at her as she was now lying on the floor.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, let's just be on with it," Zuzi said, still on the ground just for the sake of it.

"Why aren't you stuttering now?" Marshall questioned, noticing that she hasn't for a while.

"I don't stutter when I don't have to improvise." She told him, "Or on-on simple sentences. And occasionally I pull something off, um, w-without... I-I can just sometimes talk correctly."

"You're saying you don't know how to talk half the time?" Rocky asked, trying to mimic Zuzi's jokey type of personality for a bit.

"Oh I know I don't know how to correctly talk. I'm just able to do it. Talk p-properly that is. Sometimes." She replied.

"Rocky, didn't you say before that the place could be unstable and collapse?" Marshall asked just now remembering it.

"Zuzi knows his place extremely well so and she told us to so we did. And like you said no one knows what's outside." He replied, with a very unexpected answer too.

Marshall didn't get to respond though, as Ryder and the others came back after this and the same thing happened before. They had a potion, Zuzi and the other two stopped talking and so on. They came back with the potion they needed that's what you need to know. It was much quicker than expected too. Zuzi proceeded to tell them the amount needed to turn you into a bat as they all had to do. They all got equal shares of it, as it didn't matter the size of who or what drank it, it was just a matter of if you did, and with the correct amount. They drank them and soon enough they were all bats, although Chase was flying like he was a drunk bat. Everyone knew it was Chase too because he had the purple potion effect on him. Guess the other kinds of potions don't remove effect of separate ones. He eventually managed to fly his way into the hole they made, but it was quite a spectacle.

True to what Rocky had said, the room was empty but battered, a blue potion and a pipe. The flew there for a bit until one of the bats just bit itself in the wing and turned back into a pup. Guess who it was, Zuzi. Apparently, you didn't need another drink to turn back. Each of them one by one bit their wings and turned back midair and falling to the ground with Zuzi.

"Now we go in the pipe." Zuzi told them.

"There isn't any water in the pipe though." Skye replied, looking into the pipe, seeing no water.

"We can pour the potion in and ride that." Zuzi suggested, but she would get immediately declined.

"There isn't enough in the bottle to flow through an entire pipe." Ryder explained to her, "Marshall, use your water cannon to put water in the pipe."

"Got it, Ryder." He told, barking out his water cannon and filling the pipe.

"Oh yeah. How fucking great." Said a very familiar voice.

It was pretty obvious who, due to the fact that it sounded completely different from any of the pup's or Ryder's voice and it echoed slightly. It was Rico, clear as day.

"Where were you at, Rico?" Zuzi questioned.

"Like you need to know. Why does it matter? You know I was gone and that's all you need to know." He told her, and he's beginning to sound progressively different, at least it seemed like it.

"You aren't getting anything out of Rico." Marshall told her, just putting his water cannon away.

"You will when he's stupid enough to leave audio recordings lying around." Zuzi remarked, rolling her eyes.

Rico didn't say anything to this and just watched them each turn into fish one by one, near the pipe so they transformed into Marshall's stream of water. Ryder was last because he was the only one who could hold the bottle and give it to the pups. It was a pretty big risk just going into a random pipe, but what other options did they have? They looked around at every place in the hospital and found nothing. So this was all they had to do to possibly escape this hospital. The pipe didn't have many turns and it wasn't that long. When it ended they were launched into a room, and the second they landed they were transformed back to normal and were lying down as they transformed. The room was a square, and it was very big. Estimate of around one hundred feet tall and wide. How Rico is able to build and make all these rooms and places were beyond all of them. It was made of metal or some sort of alloy, and it was a sort of lightish black. It had like a hole in the middle of it but it was closed off by some railings. Really strange place, as usual for Rico.

"I can see normally now!" Chase told everyone, so I guess the fish reverted the effects, it's strange.

"That's great bud but this is bad." Zuzi responded, "I know how Rico is better than most, this is bad."

"Yes, you are right. You just wait a couple seconds and prepare for death. Hopefully." Rico told her, which obviously caused tension.

"We've gotten passed all your other things. What's this gonna be?" Chase asked.

"I call him Charlie. He's an evil spirit that's all I need to say." Rico told them.

They then began to here a very deep sounding hum, and it was humming a song. And then, some floating ghost with a black cloak, no legs just arms and seemingly no torso although they couldn't see for the cloak, and a very messed up face. Also bloody, there's a lot of blood on his cloak.

"Of course." Zuzi mumbled under her breath, "There's a way to kill everything, Rico!"

"You can't kill something that's already dead, though." Rico told her.

"W-well, too bad!" She said, "W-w-we'll do something."

"Yeah, good luck with that."

The railings in the middle began shaking as Charlie started moving towards them. He was slow, but when you have an evil floating spirit coming at you at any speed it's terrifying. They all had sense enough to run obviously.

"So how do we hurt this guy?" Rubble asked.

"I-I-I really don't have the slightest idea." Zuzi told, "Just-just-just, run and think."

They did, they ran. For only a short while until the room started to strange transform. It just seemed to turn ghostly and then a new room appeared. Which was extremely confusing. This room was wooden and half the size as there was a wall in the middle. There were also some bear traps on the floor and since Charlie floats he cannot step in, but pups and humans do not float. Charlie was also on the other side of the wall and not coming through.

"That's how we can kill him!" Zuzi blurted out, "He can't go through the wall- the walls so we trap him in 'em"

"How though?" Skye questioned.

"The walls turn ghostly for a second before appearing. We just need to get the right timing." Ryder explained, understanding of what Zuzi was trying to say.

"What if he doesn't follow us?" Rubbles asked.

"This is Rico." Zuzi said in a jokingly unamused tone.

"Oh yeah."

With that, the room transformed again, and again, and again. It was always a different setup of the same objects it seemed like, walls in different places and traps on the floor were reused as well. It seemed east really with the speed of Charlie but that didn't really hold up for about five transformations and he got faster each. He was the point of the speed of the pups after a while and it was scary.

"Let's spice things up a little bit here..." Rico murmured after a while of just watching.

"What are you gonna do now?" Chase mumbled, but it wasn't really a mumble as Rico could hear him.

"Five... Four... Three... Two... One..." Rico ticked, "Boom."

As he said that a pretty big explosion just happened from the middle of the room, where the hole was. At least now they knew what it was for. They were all along the edges thankfully since they had been backing away from Charlie and Rico's countdown was what they were paying attention to so all they were doing was backing away. All of them were along the edges and safe, all of the members of the PAW Patrol anyway.

There was one pup who knew all about Rico. One pup who knew all of Rico's tricks. One that would pay no attention to him. It was her, Zuzi, she had been blown up by the explosion and launched directly into a wall. She didn't look dead. She didn't look alive either.

"Please." Rocky repeatedly mumbled under his breath as Marshall rushed over to her while the rest kept Charlie away, who seemed a little slower.

"Well. She's not dead," Marshall called out giving them quite a relief, "but she is definitely not okay."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rocky called back.

"For starters, I don't think pups are supposed to have three legs." He told them, and it definitely was not a good thing.

"I think that's enough." Rocky yelled out at him.

"Yeah. I stop the bleeding but that's I can do right now." Marshall told, "She's out cold at the moment."

Marshall did all he could, and to his luck, she never woke up as he was doing all that he was. She hadn't woken even after Marshall had finished either, although he didn't really take extremely long. The others never let Charlie near them so she was safe, and Marshall was there with her because the knew exactly what she will feel as soon as she wakes up. While he was waiting though, the others actually managed to get Charlie stuck on a wall.

"Looks like speed can be a detriment there Charlie!" Rocky exclaimed as Charlie couldn't escape the wall.

Rubble was going to say "now what" but he was only able to get the "now" out before the wall just busted open and the portal eas there.

Marshall walked up to them and said, "That was pretty anticlimactic."

"How do you make running around for an hour and trying to trap something in a wall climactic? Or even exciting?" Rocky responded.

"Yeah, okay."

They all went over to Zuzi, paying seemingly zero attention to the fact that Charlie was now gone and they could escape just now. They care more about Zuzi.

"Ah, congratulations you stopped Charlie. I guess spirits don't like being stuck in walls forever." Rico spoke, but getting completely ignored by everyone.

"You know that you have to go through many more of these right? Is she's losing a leg right now then what's happening in the other ones? Ironic this is a hospital too. This is definitely not the most killer of mine, and if a leg was lost here, death will happen somewhere. You know, it's always best to play everything conservatively when your life is on the line, some just never seem to figure out basic common sense though. She couldn't." Rico monologued, getting minuscule attention.

When Zuzi woke up, it was to her immediate notice that one, Charlie was dead, two, everyone was alive, three, she had no leg. It definitely did not feel good, that's what I'll say.

"W-well... I-I-I can't feel m-my l-leg." She joked, even with only three legs she still tries to joke around and brighten it all up just a bit.

She was crying though, except she was trying to hold it back, but she really didn't care that they saw her crying. They were all looking at her as she was so it was pretty obvious but she tried to hold it back as much as possible anyway. It was what it was, that leg isn't growing back and she just had to deal with it, that was her mindset. It wasn't simple, but she figured out how to walk although she had some help with Rocky and Marshall holding her up for a bit of it, Rocky on the side with only one leg.

"We ready to leave?" Ryder asked, getting a nod from all pups.

They all stepped in and went to the next place.

"Many more of these" Rico says there will be. That doesn't sound pleasant.

-Medical Massacre - Rico Winter


	7. Next man up

The teleporting ride was the same as usual. Having five or so seconds just inside of some strange blue timewarp and then coming out on the other side. Except the only thing different is where they end up. This time it was a town. A simple town with little normal houses, all wooden, some two stories some, one story and that's about it. The town was also completely engulfed in a not so, but still pretty thick fog. It was essentially a ghost town and that's what Rico was going for.

"I d-don't have very good vision." Zuzi spoke, "This definitely does not help."

"Well none of us can see through this." Marshall told her.

"Ah, this place. It was a nice little town before it was abandoned. When everyone left it was just forgotten about. I decided to use this to my advantage and now this is what it is! Also, don't even think about flying over the fog little one. You won't like the outcome." Rico explained to them.

"What'll happen?" Rocky questioned.

"There are some... Things, a thing that can't find you right now. But if you get out of the fog, it will one, push the fog away from your area. Two, it will see you and will kill you." Rico explained.

"Well then let's just look around as always." Ryder suggested, and the pups agreeing.

"I'll tell you where the portal is, right now. The thing I mentioned out of the fog has it. So good luck." Rico told them, helping but it wasn't good information really.

They began walking down one of the streets. As they did one of the houses just fell over next to them. The whole house just collapsed that instant while they were walking by. No one was hurt by it. The worst that happened was Marshall got hit with a small log but it didn't do any damage.

"I see the theme here." Rubble said, expecting this to happen many times.

"We need to be careful going through here." Marshall agreed.

"I-I-I know more about Ser- uh, Rico than anyone here. If we leave this f&fog, Rico wouldn't have anything that would instantly kill us." Zuzi explained, "He has no ability to do th-that in the first place."

"God damn it if I'm gonna kill any of you it's gonna be her!" Rico blurted, saying it very quickly.

"You already blew one of my legs off! Why do you need to-need to kill me?" Zuzi questioned.

"Simply put, you're a bitch." Rico told her, with all the confidence in the world.

"That's nice." She replied, "A-aight, l-let's start going now."

When they walked they were very wary of walking near houses none fell over, but a mailbox did and it lightly scrapped Rubble. Nothing to be seen anywhere. They could barely see away in the fog. It seems like Rico might be brightening up just a tiny bit and keeping them from actually getting things. They've only gone down one street though and there's still time for Rico to have done something to help them.

"The first street has nothing." Ryder told, "Onto the next."

"Before you go and do that, let's make this a bit more interesting..." Rico said to them.

"Do you have any self-control?" Zuzi asked to him, in an annoyed sort of tone.

"Girl. If you are a supposed maniac going through and collecting people to murder during their movies, do you think they have self-control? I need help and live like being forced into this. Killers don't have self-control dumbass, why would you even ask that?" Rico responded.

"You need help." Zuzi said, toned down.

"Yes, I do." Rico replied, "Now are you ready?"

"No, not really." Skye answered, with no expectations.

"Too bad."

Rico then caused a tornado to immediately strike in the area. It took up everyone because it appeared near instantaneously as well as being right on top of them. It didn't take them to high up though, and not for long either. What happened though was that everyone was launched to a different place. Some different directions some different speeds, but they all flew away from each other. No one knew where anyone was.

* * *

Zuzi woke up in the most impossible of places. If you're taken by a tornado and flung, you aren't supposed to end up in some underground tunnels. This was either a dream, or some crazy mind games from Rico are going on at the moment. It was the latter. She went from above ground in a tornado to underground.

"Um, what?" Zuzi asked aloud, being genuinely dumbfounded.

Zuzi saw a little note engraved in the wall to her left, which was dirt, the tunnel she was currently in was entirely dirt, and she whispered it aloud to herself.

"This is your punishment." Is what she read.

It was already terrifying being stuck in dimly lit tunnels lightened with only torches, underneath no one knows where, but Rico really wanted to punish Zuzi for being a nuisance.

Zuzi heard faintly spoken feminine whispers coming from one of the ends if the tunnels saying, "You deserve this."

"I-I-I-I r-really, um, I-I don't, um." Zuzi actually couldn't speak.

"Come closer. Come closer." The voices kept speaking to her.

Zuzi wished and wished it was all a nightmare but she had to face the facts that Rico was out for genuine blood. He wanted her dead and terrified. He now despised her. He doesn't seem to like anyone, but Zuzi was defining Rico's hatred at the moment. Zuzi just stood there never spoke, but definitely thought. She was not going towards the voices unless she was forced to move. She was shaking like crazy as you would imagine.

"This has gone on long enough." The voices whispered more.

Zuzi then began hearing a faint metal banging sound coming from the opposite direction of the voices. It was slowly but surely making its way to her which left her with a decision. Zuzi decided to start walking away from the metal sound, which was towards the voices.

"That's it." The voice whispered.

Every torch she went passed burnt out in the spot, and every time it happened there was always told breeze that blew over her. The metal was sounding farther away, but the voices kept whispering to her as she walked down the mentally traumatizing tunnel. Then, all the sudden, ever noise stopped and every torch went out. Zuzi was in tears out of fear right now and stopped dead in her tracks. After it all ended there was just a walking sound, coming from the direction the metal naming was. It was very quickly running towards Zuzi and even when she tried to run it was faster than her. It had a burning, echoing sounding hiss when it got close to Zuzi. Zuzi only had three legs so she had no chance to outrun anything relatively fast. This was one of those things that three legs just couldn't keep her away from. As the sound got so close that it seemed like it would be right in front of her, she closed her eyes and waited... Nothing happened though. The hiss just echoed out of existence and she was left in silence once again.

That was only short-lived until severed hands immediately started ripping out of the walls and reaching for Zuzi. Everywhere she went new hands just popped straight out of the wall and tried to grab her. Some of them even did! They only ever got her legs, and when they did Zuzi would have to struggle to escape. At this point, she was just running into the abyss of hell. When she was running, the hands still grabbing at her, a flash of light happened and there was just a ghostly creature standing at the end of the tunnel. Head turned diagonally, gray face staring directly at her. At this point, Zuzi was left without hope and ran directly towards the figure. When she reached it, it picked her up by the throat, pulled her closer, and screamed an ear-piercing hiss and disappeared dropping Zuzi to the floor. Zuzi just kept running, praying for any glimmer of hope to arise.

It did! Hope did arrive! Zuzi actually managed to get out of that tunnel into a much bigger sort of dome-like room. It wasn't a break, though as what is seemingly what is going to kill Zuzi, butcher knives started falling from the ceiling, inching closer and closer to Zuzi. If she wanted to live she had to enter a tunnel to get away from the knives. Turns out this room seemed to be the entrance to all the tunnels, so she just ran straight to one and was safe from the knives.

She wasn't out of the woods yet! Right then and there another flash happened, revealing... Her, except with all legs and dead. A dead Zuzi was in front of her. Zuzi at this point was thinking about just letting go of everything, but she's never one to do that. So she pranced towards her dead self and nothing happened, it just stood there, eyes following Zuzi's movements. Zuzi went to walk past it, but horrifically one of the severed hands ripped out of the side of the dead Zuzi and grabbed Zuzi in a grip that she could barely escape.

The end of this hell came when a huge pile of dirt just fell on top of her right after she escaped the arm. Only her one back paw was hanging out and she was left buried. Buried inside of the traumatizing hell you ran through for what seemed like a year.

* * *

Rubble was just simply thrown to another side of the town. The landing hurt quite a bit but it was all good after that. Besides, he just looked around for a short while and found Marshall, who had the exact same thing happen to him. So they clearly weren't in a very terrible situation. They ended up just searching around themselves, hopefully waiting for the others so appear sometime or another.

"Hey, Marshall. Do you think we can escape all of these movies?" Rubble asked.

"We've escape three already." Marshall replied, "The only casualty was Zuzi's leg."

"Didn't Rico say that he has much worse in store?" Rubble questioned.

"Stay optimistic, Rubble."

* * *

Skye wasn't even inside the town anymore. She was inside the fog still, but no buildings or streets to be seen. She was just on a hill, probably close to the town. She decided to go right which got her to the end of the fog but she didn't go in because she was afraid about what Rico had said before, so she turned around. It actually took her quite a few minutes to find a way to actually get to town. When she got there though she couldn't enter, there was a fence around it.

"There has to be an entrance to the town somewhere." Skye said to herself, now beginning to feel chills from the fog.

She went right, found nothing but when she went left there was a turn in the fence. She followed that and there was the entrance. It was a completely different area of the town but she was in the town at least.

* * *

Chase got a stroke of genius for a second when he shot his net as he was falling to keep from hitting the ground very hard. The only one that wasn't hurting at all was Chase. He was in an extremely obscure part if the town, and even before he walked around some of the houses were already collapsed. It was clearly the bad part of town. How a town like this even managed to have a bad part was strange but it was there.

"I should be able to find everyone again." Chase mumbled, "Unless they ended up with or in a worse situation than this."

He walked a bit down what seemed like the main street, stretching across the entire town passed all the homes and connected to the ones with houses. He found Skye while walking too, so now he had proof that at least she was okay. No proof of the others but he was almost certain they were.

"So what happened to you, Skye?" Chase asked her, a little while after they started looking for the others.

"I was thrown outside of the town." Skye explained, "I was on a hill."

"Anything could've happened to the others in that case." Chase replied.

"Hopefully nothing too bad."

* * *

Ryder and Rocky landed on the same street, just opposite sides of it. They met each other within a minute of landing, they had clear injuries but none threatening in any way. Their goal was to just find all the others, in hopefully good shape. You never know with a tornado but judging by the power it had on the two of them there seems to be little to worry about what could be happened to the others.

"Where do you think they're ended up at Ryder?" Rocky asked.

"Could be anywhere. Tornados are unpredictable." Ryder responded, but not appearing concerned.

"Rico is unpredictable." Rocky replied, "He has way too many tools."

"He does seem to have way more than he should."

"Thinking about it, how has Rico not been caught yet? His excuse was not good." Rocky questioned, now just thinking about it.

"No one would suspect anything like this." Ryder answered, "He also takes people from all over everywhere to keep all suspicion spattered. He probably takes a lot of low profile people and pups a lot of the time."

"For a crazy killer, Rico actually seems pretty smart." Rocky said, and genuinely meaning it.

"Doesn't seem like a good thing."

* * *

"Can you use your megaphone, Chase?" Skye suggested as it would help with finding everyone quickly.

"Don't know if it's a good idea. Rico said there is something out of the fog that can't find us and that would definitely draw attention." Chase explained although he hadn't thought about using the megaphone before.

"So would a tornado." Skye responded in a sort of joking voice, but it was meant to be true.

"Touche." Chase responded to her, "Also why wouldn't Rico just tell it where we're at?"

"Yeah, I don't think Rico is all truth here." Skye exclaimed.

Chase took out his megaphone and let Skye talk into it. She never gave him a chance to talk as she just stepped up and did it. They just had to hope that everyone was around, they heard it, and that Rico telling the truth. Which seems responsible. Because Rico.

* * *

Both Rubble and Marshall heard Skye's voice echo calmly through the town. It wasn't very loud, nor quiet, but they were able to tell where it came from. A light pole fell down directly in front of Marshall while they were rushing to where they heard Skye and he tripped right over it. He just gathered himself and acted as nothing happened. It didn't that long a while until Marshall and Rubble found Chase and Skye.

"Three more." Chase said when Marshall and Rubble came.

"Just gotta hope they all get here."

* * *

When Ryder and Rocky heard the voice they immediately began to run towards it. Rocky actually ended up getting stuck one time when a house fell down on top of him, but he was far enough away to not get fully hurt by in and just his body wedged. Ryder was able to pull him out pretty easily and they continued on their ways. It took them a little longer than it should have because Ryder had to often stop for Rocky. If a house falls on you, its gonna hurt. They did make their way back to the group though and the team was all back together.

"All but one now." Chase spoke first.

"She's what I'm afraid of." Marshall told, "Rico just told us he really wanted her gone."

"She's tough. She lost a leg and moved on." Skye added.

"That's a big detriment though." Rocky explained, "Hard for her to move easily."

"She might just be taking a while because of that." Ryder reassured although he was a bit scared too.

"We just have to hope."

Hope they did. Nothing heard from Rico since the tornado hit them and they couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing. He has a reputation for spilling out information that he probably shouldn't have, so he could honestly be of use to them if he makes a mistake. He was gone though, which definitely isn't abnormal.

"Hey everyone I found one of those radio things." Rubble called out, as he was just looking around he found of in the missing window of one of the houses.

"Another one of Rico's story monologues?" Chase questioned, going over to Rubble along with the others.

"I think so." Rubble said as he pressed the button to start the audio.

* * *

 _"There are two kinds of people. Those who think this generation is good, and vice versa."_

 _"Y'know it seems like this generation is just, burning in a sense, and we're just here, patiently waiting. Let's put this into a much easier perspective to understand. All the icons of the world are just getting older and older, changing with time, and the time will eventually come. So who's gonna come and change all this? Who's the next 'hero' gonna be? No one knows, and we're just waiting."_

 _"Everyone changes, Y'know? Do you truly believe all the things you once did? Every single thing you believed at one point, have they held up? Y'know, and this is something that I have always thought about. Some have different opinions or do different things than others. Are you the one up in the front, being a part of it all. Or are you the one who just sits and watches? Are you the brick, or the architect? Think about this in any sense you want... It'll trace right back."_

 _"Think back to all the things you once thought. Maybe you wanted the world to burn or maybe you wanted everyone to live peacefully. Something like that, I'm willing to bet you still think the same. You still want this world to be one way, but it's not. What am I to say though? I'm one pup and you don't need to listen to a word I'm saying. You're in control of what you want to think and believe."_

 _"Don't be afraid to repeat things. '_ _Doing the same thing over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.' Change it up a little bit, but never be afraid to bear the burden of repeating. Whatever happens, happens. You may not be able to control what happens. But you can."_

* * *

"Makes you think..." Marshall said after a while of silence after the audio.

"These have been mostly stories about Rico." Rocky told, "This was way different."

"Rico has definitely changed." Skye replied.

"He just went insane at one point it seems." Chase added.

"However he once was, he is still trying to kill us for his own movies. We need to stop that." Ryder explained, although he definitely was thinking.

"We can't do that without Zuzi." Marshall said as she was pretty much part of the team at this point.

"We'll just have to wait for her then."

And wait they did. They just say there and hoped and waited for her to come. They called into Chase's megaphone every one in a while, but with every passing minute, all hope seemed to drift slowly away. They were going to wait a long time there, but with how long it took each of them to find each other and now how long it's taking her, it seemed all too out of reach.


	8. See one Lose another

Rico was watching Zuzi the whole time that she was running through the hellish tunnels. He never said anything but he knew what was happening and he was even the one who made the pile of dirt fall on Zuzi. She couldn't get out of the pile, she only had one back legmakes it very difficult to struggle. So she was just left sitting there. Front Paws weren't any help, they were trapped. Dirt doesn't seem like the most useful thing to use to trap anything but Rico has a strange ability to make anything happen. He did, however, forget one important detail.

Zuzi felt something tugging on her one leg sticking out of the dirt. She was eventually pulled out of the dirt to be immediately be greeted by another pup, who was a white boxer. She had never seen him before, but he just saved her.

"Hey, yeah, we need to go. Now." He told as soon as she popped out.

"Wh-who are you?" Zuzi asked.

"My name is Tucker, but we need to leave." He explained, pulling her in the direction he was going.

"Do you know where to go?" Zuzi questioned as they both ran.

"Yeah. I saw it before. Rico put me down here. There's a weird gray thing in front of it though." Tucker told her, "Can we not talk and just try to get out of here?"

"Sure thing."

So Zuzi just followed him down the tunnel. He clearly knew that Zuzi had only three legs so he kept slowing down sometimes to let her catch up. There was nothing in the tunnel right now. Rico probably thought they were dead so just let them be in that place. That idea was quickly shot down however when they took one turn. Right after the turn, the hands started poking out of the walls.

"Oh, God," Zuzi mumbled when the hands started coming.

"Try your best to ignore it all." Tucker explained, "They aren't threats, they just want to scare you."

"I-I'll try..." Zuzi told him.

She was constantly falling over because the hands grabbed her one back leg and that threw her entirely off balance. She always just got right back up though and just followed Tucker, who was slowed down for her.

"If we ignore it all, we just run through this tunnel." Tucker told her, "The thing at the end is the only threat."

Zuzi said nothing and just kept going. There were sounds, but Tucker convinced her that they were nothing. They ran for a while but they did eventually reach the end. As Tucker said, the gray humane character that picked up Zuzi before was standing there, staring like it was before.

"Okay. Listen to me." Tucker grabbed Zuzi's attention, "As soon as I begin to run, you run."

"W-why?" Zuzi questioned, afraid and confused.

"Yeah. You'll just have to trust me." Tucker told, and looked at her until she answered.

"Well, o-okay then" She confirmed, now waiting for Tucker to go.

"I'm gonna run slow because you can't run very fast." Tucker said to her, "It's very understandable."

Tucker made sure she was a slight bit behind him, and that no hands were in front of them as they would prove a threat in this situation. Tucker did a countdown and a very short time before he finished he ran, to make sure Zuzi was behind him. He just ran straight forward and so did Zuzi. Zuzi had no idea what the plan was here. They were both running right directly into the one thing Tucker said was a threat, but she went with it. Good that she did. When Tucker was almost directly in front of the figure, he rolled. He rolled under its legs to avoid the grab. While it tried to grab him, that gave Zuzi time to just run past it with no threat whatsoever. Right behind it was a staircase that leads to a door on the ceiling above them. When they opened it, they were inside a house.

"Thank you. So much." Zuzi thanked but she had no idea what to do to properly thank him.

"I was crushed too. Except I was able to get out." Tucker explained, "I heard the whimper you let out as you were crushed and I had to help."

"I-I-I don't even know how to thank you," Zuzi told him.

"Why even?" Tucker asked, walking out of the house which thankfully didn't collapse.

"Y-you saved my life. H-how am I n-not supposed to?" Zuzi questioned, walking out with him.

"I never asked for any return." Tucker told her.

Zuzi just ran up and hugged him. It felt kinda awkward for Zuzi because she had to stand on one leg to do it but she did it nonetheless, and Tucker allowed it.

"Can I ask, why you don't have that leg?" Tucker said, cautiously.

"Ri-Rico blew it off." Zuzi told him, with no hesitation.

"Oh." Tucker exclaimed, "Yeah, that must've hurt a lot."

"Well no duh." Zuzi joked, "Explosions hurt."

"So do you know how to leave this place?" Tucker asked her.

"I have some, uh, friends somewhere around here." Zuzi explained to Tucker.

Just before Tucker could respond to that, they heard Chase's voice quietly echo through the city, calling for her. They were able to figure out what direction it was coming from and they both ran towards it. A whole lot of things collapsed as they were running towards Chase's voice. Many flickering light poles, fronts of houses and sometimes mailboxes just fell over. One of the light poles nicked Tucker but he convinced Zuzi that he was fine. Took a bit longer than expected for them to reach the rest of the team, but they did.

"She's here! Zuzi!" Marshall shouted out, being the one that saw here appear from the fog.

They all ran up to her, surprised, happy, and excited to see her. There and alive. It took them a few seconds to realize that Tucker was there too. As they were all ecstatic that Zuzi was there.

"So. Who's he?" Rocky asked, nudging his paw in the direction of Tucker.

"Yeah. My name is Tucker, I came with her." Tucker explained, trying to stray attention back to Zuzi.

"H-he saved my life." Zuzi told everyone, "I-I'll ex-explain where I-I was later. Right now I just wanna rest for a while..."

"Yeah. Let her sit. She just went through a lot." Tucker told them.

"So. I think we should introduce ourselves." Ryder suggested, looking to Tucker, "Where a team called the PAW Patrol and I'm the leader, Ryder, the blue police pup is Chase. The-"

"I'm colorblind." Tucker told, cutting Ryder off.

"Oh okay then. What color is he?" Ryder asked, now curious.

"Blue."

"Okay. So you're not blind to blue." Ryder jotted down in his head.

"What color am I?" Marshall asked, walking over to Tucker.

"Yellow-ish." Tucker wrongly stated, but it's what he saw.

"No. I'm red. My name is Marshall." Marshall said to Tucker, then walking away.

"Red is my biggest issue."

"Okay. My turn!" Rubble shouted, going over to Tucker, "What color am I?"

"Yeah. You look yellow too." Tucker said, and this time he was right.

"I am yellow! My name is Rubble."

They did this for Skye as well, who Tucker wrongly saw as blue. It would've been nice if they could have Rocky do as well, but he didn't have anything on because Rico took everything. They had to explain that to Tucker. They asked Tucker what he saw green as, and he knew because he had to see yellow plants all the time. Everyone says its actually green, so that was something he knew.

"What do we do now?" Skye questioned.

"I guess we just, rest like Zuzi is," Ryder stated, as they all just sat down and waited for her to be ready again.

When you have only three legs and you were running around for as long as she was, along with the actual traumatization she went through beforehand. She was understandably tired out from all that she did. Since Rico wasn't there to do anything, they just took one of the rare breaks that they got.

* * *

When Zuzi finally got back up from her pose while lying on the ground, which actually wasn't painful to lie on, it took some help because she still wasn't entirely used to having three legs. She explained what Rico had done to her, and every one of them was extremely empathetic. They still had no leads to how to get out of the place, so they were still just roaming around no matter what was happening.

"How far out does this fog go?" Tucker asked them.

"It goes a bit outside of the town." Skye told him, as she was the one launched out and met the end.

"Speaking of this fog actually." Chase started, "I think our only chance out is to just leave this fog. Me and Skye talked about it and we think we'd most likely still have a chance to live if we go out."

"As much as I hate to admit, he's probably right." Skye supported, nervous about it though.

"If the exit is outside the fog, what other decision do we have in this situation?" Chase explained, making all the others think.

"How do you know this?" Tucker asked as he didn't hear Rico explain all this.

"We were told. By Rico." Chase replied.

"Why?" Tucker asked.

"We have no idea." Chase answered and this was something they weren't told.

"If we do walk out, do we go together?" Marshall asked.

"I think we should. If there is something out there we'd have more of a chance to survive. If there isn't anything we're all just out there." Ryder explained, and it seemed like a good idea.

They all took quite a while to think about this. It seemed like the only decision bit there's also the chance they would just die there. Rico always has something at his disposal though so if they just stayed there forever they would eventually die anyway so they all came to decide the only decision was to just walk out. So they walked straight to the entrance of the town, and just prepared themselves to leave. They were all afraid but they were ready. They all simultaneously walked out of the fog and saw all that was outside of the town. It was a hilly, grassy area, and they were all alive to see it. Nothing was there. Just the hills and the grass.

"So you decided to make it outside. Not a great idea. I have a friend for you." Rico chimed in.

"Oh boy." Zuzi exclaimed, scared, but not at all surprised.

"Oh, and when I said a friend. I really meant it." As Rico said that, a familiar pup in orange appeared on one of the hills.

"Lemme just tell you now. He's not your friend anymore."

"I never knew this guy e-existed." Zuzi told since no one ever told her about Zuma.

"He's a part of our team. He was taken away before." Ryder explained, Zuma still just standing there.

"Oh yeah! About that. The pup you saw getting taken away wasn't Zuma. It was a doppelganger I had with you from the start. I had the real one the whole time." Rico told everyone, dumbfounding them all.

"Why was he so useful to us then?" Skye questioned, as fake Zuma had saved them and killed many threats.

"Either for the movie. Or that I knew you were going to get out of the situation anyway, so I just sped it up." Rico explained.

"I have no idea what's going on." Tucker said, failing to comprehend any of this.

"Me neither." Zuzi told, same as Tucker.

"Eh, whatever. I'm just gonna let him kill you now. a-bye bye!" Rico told, Zuma now starting to move towards them.

"What do we do? We can kill him!" Marshall questioned, really nervous about if they or Zuma will die.

"Rico would've made it so Zuma has the portal." Ryder told.

"Why does Rico even have these portals?" Chase asked, now just beginning to question it.

"Probably to access all these films without running all around." Ryder explained, thinking of where the portal could actually be.

"R-Rico couldn't just p-put a- put a portal inside of, uh, Zuma, right?" Zuzi started, "He couldn't just-just change the insides of a-a living being. That's a-a living pup. Just probably brainwashed I think."

"Yeah. That doesn't seem possible." Tucker said.

"He still has his pup pack." Rubble told them all, and they all took heavy notice.

"He's getting pretty close." Chase spoke, "We should probably get going now."

They ran off to the right, away from the fogged town and away from the chocolate lab coming after them. To the right of them was no hill, just an open plain that they could easily run through. Zuma wasn't exactly sprinting at them so they didn't seem to have to run far. They made sure everyone was looking out, as they tried to hatch out a plan.

"What do we do?" Chase asked with a very concerned tone, "That's Zuma we can't kill him!"

"There's no way the portal is inside him." Zuzi explained, "Rico couldn't. He just couldn't."

"Well, then where could it be?" Skye questioned, pretty confused at the situation in the first place.

"Rico didn't just now make this area so it can't be with Zuma." Zuzi told, "No idea where it could be though. Nothing else seems alive around here."

"Maybe the tunnels you two were in?" Marshall suggested.

"Maybe. When were you put in the tunnels, Tucker?" Zuzi asked him.

"Rico kept throwing me in there multiple times." Tucker started, "I was put in like twenty times from all kinds of places not even around this town."

"If you were in there for so long then Rico wouldn't be able to do anything down there. Depending on how long the delay was between each time you went." Zuzi explained.

"Zuma's coming." Rubble abruptly said, with Zuma just popping over a hill.

"How often are we going to run." Zuzi reasonably complained as she had only three legs it's hard to run if you're a pup.

They each began to run. Sadly though, one of them didn't get to finish running. Rubble never got his chance to run away, as Zuma lunged at him and just killed him on the spot. No chance to escape, no chance to talk. Dead.

"That's what I like." Rico spoke but in a seemingly emotionless tone, "Also, Tucker I just noticed your ass. Did you have fun?"

"We can't- we can't. I can't..." Marshall shuddered, unable to speak at the sight of Rubble's death.

Chase just tapped Marshall's side to get his attention to make sure he wouldn't suffer the same fate as Rubble did. Zuma clearly wasn't full speed, or else he wouldn't stray so far behind so easily. None of them knew why he went so slow, but it helped them a bunch. They were easily able to get back to a safe plain to continue talking about escaping. Except they were gonna be better with managing time this time around so no one else died. None of them spoke of Rubble's death, just so it would be that little bit less painful to bare.

"Okay, okay, so, Tucker, how long where you normally in the tunnels?" Zuzi asked, slowly turning into a detective.

"Different every time." He responded.

"How long was the delay between when Rico put you in?" Zuzi questioned.

"Also different every time."

"Welp, this isn't good." Zuzi exclaimed in a white-flag kind of a way.

"How long ago did this start?" Skye asked him, seemingly stealing detective roles from Zuzi.

"Some hours ago." Tucker responded.

"Wasn't that about the time Rico left us alone on the island?" Skye questioned, now starting to get somewhere.

"The tunnel did seem quickly improvised." Zuzi explained, "Not very well made and, for Rico's standards not really... Normal."

"So there is definitely nothing of importance in the tunnels?" Ryder all around questioned, with agreement from all.

It took a very long time for them to find everything. Zuma was constantly chasing them, though at snail's pace and he was a constant nuisance everytime they needed to discuss something. It was painful and difficult for Zuzi to be at constant duress from the handicap she has. Everyone did there fair share of giving ideas. You'd think that after they escaped Zuma do many times Rico would speed him up or something but nope, same pace whole time. Rico never spoke a word either. The last thing he said was when he just noticed Tucker was with them.

It took ages but, yes, they did fund the portal. Rico is just full of surprises and from what they figured out, Rico had no big monster to hold the portal for him in this one. One of the hundreds of hills scattered around the place had a door in it. Inside the door was just, the portal. It was a simple place but very far away from the actual town.

"Rico will never stop confusing me." Chase said, shaking his head.

"Some for all of us brother." Zuzi replied, and she just so happened to be the one next to him so she patted him on the back.

"We should probably leave right now before Zuma comes in the door." Ryder explained to them.

They all agreed with what Ryder said and they stepped into the portal. Eventful this one was.

-Down Death Avenue- Rico Winter

* * *

 _Oh if there's any one of these I want an opinion on its this chapter along with the last. This is a little bit different from what I normally do, so I'd like to see if its good._


	9. Off the radar

**I believe that Adventure Bay is located in Canada. This slightly ties into a couple things in this story. Just putting that out there.**

* * *

The teleportation process felt a little bit different this time. Rubble was no longer there. The process was the same as it always was. They teleported to the place they were destined too, just with one less pup. Technically the headcount was still seven because of Tucker but Rubble was always with them, he was a part of their team. He was now dead at the paws of another member of the team.

Rico somehow manages to get so many places to just plop them all down on along with numerous monsters. This one was no less strange. There were on an ocean liner boat, about one-hundred-eighty meters, or, as it was to Zuzi, six-hundred feet, as she was American. It didn't seem to be moving, just stationary in the water. It was an old type of ocean liner and not anywhere close to a modern one. For the first time, it seemed like there was something Rico couldn't have. Rico had so many things it's debatable whether he just couldn't get a modern liner or he was just using an old one for the sake of the movie. Rico knew what he was doing when it came to movies so maybe someway somehow an old school ocean liner would be better than a modern one.

As soon as they all landed on the liner, Rocky immediately walked away from the group, plopped himself on the ground and buried his face in his paws. None of them could tell if he was crying but he was obviously presumed to be. Marshall was the one who walked over to him and tried to comfort him.

"The Zuma I admitted my feelings to was not real. The real Zuma murdered Rubble and is under the control of Rico. I loved a fake Zuma and the real one killed a friend. I can't do this." Rocky was saying, Marshall there to comfort him.

"Yes. That is exactly what happened." Rico came and said, everyone now with attention to Rocky.

"We've gotta get through this Rocky. If we sit here the same thing will happen to us." Marshall told Rocky.

"I know I just, want some time." Rocky explained, sounding a little calmer than before.

"Time is something I really don't want you to have, so, here you go," Rico spoke, sounding like it was about to be the first time he sent any monsters at them since the surgeons in the hospital.

It took a second for anything to actually come over to them because Rico for some reason had them on the other side if the ship but they were very simple, not-so monsters. They were just the battered body of what seemed like crew members and some had not-so weapons like binoculars to hit them with and other things crew members of an ocean liner would have. The bodies weren't really that dead looking anyway, and for what Rico had done multiple times before these were some pretty weak monsters. Although they were human, no one thought that Rico actually killed anybody for this. They thought he just created them with the strange magic he has.

The crew members were in the way if their escape routes. So they were left in one place with a bunch of reanimated ship crew members coming after them. They were on the very back of the liner, and their only routes were small staircases, which were both connected by a small fence, down to a slightly lowered portion of the liner which would lead them away unless there were more, which there wasn't as they could see. Rico seemed to be the psycho smart type though so he might have some hidden there was really no way of knowing.

Something they were all thinking about but never said anything about was if Rico was gonna sink the liner. If he sank the liner then they would have no way of escaping. The silver lining here though is that Rico seems to take multiple tries at getting his movies perfect. If he doesn't like what happened then he tries again. If he sinks the liner then he can't do that at all. Unless he uses his magic to make another liner but that's something that seems out of reach even for Rico.

"Now what do we do?" Skye questioned, pretty certain they would find a way out of this one.

"We don't need to use the stairs." Ryder told, "We could jump over the fence to get down."

"That seems like a pretty simple so-solution." Zuzi joked, as she always does.

"We need to go fast because these guys will get us if we don't." Chase said, referring to the crew members.

And they did so, they ran to the fence and hopped it. Although it was pretty difficult for Zuzi to get over. She got a little help though so it wasn't as difficult as it would've been. Ryder and the Pups ran far away and into the interior of the liner after running for quite a while. The interior had the main staircase which they decided not to go through and they continued forward towards the front of the liner. Through and passed the bridge to the forecastle and they planned there while they could.

"How do we get off of Something like this?" Skye questioned, speaking a little quicker than usual.

"The-the portal is on the boat, i-it has to be. Rico has this in the middle of the ocean or... whatever this body of water is so it-it-it has to be here." Zuzi told, in a sorry of confident tone.

"Okay, but where at on here?" Chase asked, speaking normally unlike the rest.

"Probably somewhere hard to reach. Maybe far down and probably with another one of Rico's crazy monsters." Ryder explained, thinking as he spoke.

"You all are getting too smart for your own good." Rico came and said, "Maybe I'll have them rip your brains out! That'd make for good scenes and it would certainly keep you from having any good ideas."

"So it is in the lower portion." Marshall exclaimed aloud.

"Rico never can keep his mouth shut." Zuzi said, with a little bit of a giggle. "He has lots of character flaws."

"You're the one with three legs." Rico returned.

"Oh, we're doing this now?" Zuzi said, sounding almost excited, "You blew the leg off in the first place by the way."

"I have secrets that you won't want me to tell. You know which ones and how I have them. Get going, bitch." Rico threatened.

"Cute." Zuzi mumbled as she began the walk towards the lower portion of the liner, along with all the others.

They went to the inner portion of the ship but that's about it before the crew members somehow managed to get to them. They walked inside and then got immediately met by Rico's crew member monsters whatever they are. Chase had the bright idea to shoot a tennis ball at one of their heads. That made the head fly straight off showing that not only that the bodies were very fragile and easy to take down, but also that they now had a way to take out these monsters so they can get where they need to go. Rico as he always does as soon as they found a way to take out the monsters he pulled them out of the set. They no longer had to deal with anything and had free roam over the liner. How this made for a good movie was beyond anyone's comprehension but Rico is the movie master here.

Tucker had said nothing during this whole thing, and he hasn't contributed to anything either. He's just been there, walking around with the group and doing everything they did. He hadn't done anything wrong he just hadn't done or said anything other than just being there. Zuzi noticed this and ran over to him.

"So what's been up with y-you dude?" Zuzi asked speaking pretty fast.

"I don't know." Was the simple response, and it wasn't cutting it.

"Okay, th-this is not how this works, man." Zuzi gave as a joke of a response.

"I'm just shy." Tucker admitted, not seeming very reluctant though.

"You don't seem like the shy type," Zuzi told him as she, him, and the rest all began walking down the main stairs.

"I step up when I'm needed." Tucker explained, "That's it."

"So you weren't shy when you were saving me because- you were needed then?" Zuzi recited, "Is that how this works?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"I mean. I-I guess there's nothing I can really- do about it." Zuzi said, going away from Tucker to let him be in his little shell that he likes.

They had a simple trip of walking down towards the bottom of the liner. It wasn't a hard trip, wasn't a complicated trip, wasn't anything unusual, just a simple walk. I guess it's not so simple of a walk when you're in the middle of a movie being filmed with the expectation of you dying. If you ignore that, then it was a pretty normal walk. It was a normal walk until the end of it, that is. The ending didn't come when the reached the bottom or, whatever their destination was going to be, it ended when they saw an extremely weird machine just sitting on a table. It had a base bigger than the body leading up to two poles shooting electricity back and forth from one another. Two little holders were branching off of it as well. This obviously caught some attention. Curiosity killed the cat, but there were no cats here, it was their rivals, dogs. The rival of dying is living, so curiosity saved the dogs... They didn't know what to do with it.

"Okay... So this is here for a reason." Skye told, looking around

"This is a very strange... What even is this?" Marshall questioned, looking around as well.

"Rico has some practical use for this." Zuzi explained, knowing she was the one with most of the knowledge on Rico, she should pitch in during most situations like this.

"Why kind of use can two poles of electricity have?" Chase asked.

"Could be something more too it that we just can't see. Probably does something more interesting." Ryder explained, beginning to look around like all the pups.

"What more can there be to a thing on a desk, though?" Chase questioned, beginning to examine the thing much more closely.

"These things look like they could hold something important." Marshall spoke, looking directly at the holders on either side of the machine.

"That's prob-probably how Rico uses this." Zuzi pitched.

"Guess we gotta go look around."

They walked around the room they were currently in seeing if just maybe it was possible something was in the room. They didn't have high expectations buy hey, its Rico. Nothing was in there unless there were things inside the walls, which doesn't seem like a bad idea if Rico is trying to hide it from everyone but himself. They pretty much figured out that Rico uses all these portals to get himself from one movie to another like they are currently doing. Except he knows where it is, and it's presumed he doesn't have to fight the monsters that usually have the portals.

"Nothing's here." Marshall complained, "We have to look around this entire ship."

"It's going to take a while." Ryder pointed out, "And we don't even know what we're looking for."

"Rico could have whatever that needed on his person, too." Chase explained, "Another thing is that this machine might have no use whatsoever."

"It has a use, dude. Rico would have a random- electric thing on a t-table for no reason." Zuzi told him, again, she had the knowledge on Rico, it was unknown how but that's not the problem at stake.

"Best decision is to just look around as always." Marshall sighed.

"We have no idea what we're looking for, or even if anything is here." Chase added.

"At least we did something. We can't just submit to Rico's antics. We escaped every other one of his sadistic films and we can try the same here." Rocky stood up, being the first thing he had said through the little moment he had before.

"Rocky's right. We can't give up. We never have." Ryder told, being what started their search.

They, as they seem to end up doing eventually in every film, began to look around for things they could possibly use to power that machine if it was even possible. They had their doubts, but they also had hopes, the two even out. It takes quite a while to search through an entire ocean liner, too long.

"Hehe, try to do that now..." Rico murmured to them mid-search.

"Oh no."

A set of stokers or coal shovelers began to chase them around the liner. They had shovels and had some burning coals constantly on their person that they launched at Ryder and the pups with the shovel. Marshall could cool down the coals but he could get every single one of them. The stokers weren't very fast but they were faster than the original half-dead crew members. Being faster, having a better weapon in a shovel, and being able to launch things at them, these were clearly worse than the crew members. The coals wouldn't kill you if you touch them hot, but they were hot enough to make you jump if it touched you. Which multiple did.

"Fun times. Burning and fire are always the best ways to kill, hurt or torture something." Rico told, although not sounding so serious.

"Not fun for us." Skye said, followed by silence from Rico.

Rico didn't take away the Stokers once they figured out how to deal with them like he usually did for some reason. He actually kept them there to keep burning them occasionally and run them around. Really they were more of a nuisance than a threat. Constantly searching around any ship with evil things shoveling burning hot coals onto you was not a pleasant experience. They didn't know what they were looking for, where it was at or even if it was there, but they searched to the best of their ability. Rico hadn't said a word since the comment on burning things either.

The stokers did actually do something threatening once and that's when Tucker strayed a little too close to one of them and got smacked by the shovel and went into the air a bit actually. He landed on the ground and got right back up though so it didn't seem like he had injuries other than a little hurting from the shovel impact. Another thing that happened is a rogue wave came along and shook the liner up a bit but not a lot happened other than everyone being splashed.

The coals, being burning hot would've seemed like they would put holes in the liner. Which they did to some extent but it was barely anything noticeable. There were quite a few holes on the liner though but they really didn't have a big effect on anything.

"When will these things ever run out of coal?" Marshall questioned, hopping over a piece.

"Rico seems to be able to do whatever he wants so I wouldn't get my hopes up of it ending anytime soon." Chase replied.

"I think I might have found something." Skye called out while the two were rambling about coal.

Skye, from the bridge, saw a very faint yellow glow coming from underneath some rope... a lot of rope. That was way more rope than you could ever need in the same place, it was a lot. Skye saw the glow though and, dodging the Stokers everyone ran over to it, moved the huge pile of unnecessary rope, and found a little gem underneath. Being under that amount of rope it was definitely hidden intentionally. The gem, rock, thing was rigged and had a disproportionate shape. It was small enough for Ryder to grab.

"That seems like it could fit in those little holders of that electric thingy." Skye told, and having a coal fly right by her after she spoke.

"Let's go put it there now and see what happens." Ryder suggested, "Good job, Skye."

They forgot exactly where the thing was so they had to roam around the general area for a second until they found it. When they did, Ryder put the gem thing in the electric things right holder thing. A lot of things. When he did that the right pole started to surge more electric than the left one, so clearly this was important.

"So we need one more for the other side then." Ryder exclaimed, "Time to get looking again."

They beat the Stokers and got out of the area where they began searching again. Look and look and look is all it seems like they ever do. Look and avoid getting killed by the numerous things Rico tries to pull. No matter how obnoxious, or repetitive it is they had to do it, there were no loopholes around it.

Why happens after this thing gets powered, no one knows. It seems very conspicuous though.


	10. All's wrong goes right

Searching was all they seemed to do. They were always searching and always looking around it was so painstakingly long. Nothing was happening, no stokers, no rogue waves, no new monsters, nothing. They were just running around a ship looking for a magic rock. The amount of nothing they were doing was insane. The first rock was on the forecastle so they looked on the other side of the ship, nothing. Inside the living quarters, nothing. Dining room, nothing. Nothing anywhere. It took so long for them to find anything at all, and who found it was Tucker. Tucker, though being colorblind, still saw the rock as yellow, just a brighter shade of it. It was in the engine room. Probably not a safe place with all the burning coal the stokers were launching at them.

"Good job Tucker." Skye said to him as they were walking away.

"Thanks." Tucker replied although he seemed reluctant.

They ran through the ship, constantly slowing for Zuzi as per usual, over to where the machine was. This time they remembered the exact location instead of just the general vicinity.

"Well. Here it goes." Ryder told as he put the stone in the other holder and stepped back.

Both of the poles were surging stronger than they were before and the machine started shaking a little. It wasn't shaking vigorously just a barely noticeable wobble. It wasn't that intense honestly there were no flickering lights or thunder or the ship wobbled. No, none of that. There was a lot of electricity on the poles, and the machine shook a tiny bit. What the machine did, however, was pretty intense although it took about two seconds. A blast of the electricity shot to the wall on the side of the machine the pups were not on and blew a hole in it. The hole in the wall revealed a secret room looking like a laboratory. It had a very artificial looking hole near one of the walls that they didn't want to look at just yet although they couldn't see into it.

Rico came back with the cliche he always had and had potions and all kinds of crazy things in there. It didn't make sense why he would make a secret room cliche, maybe he intended for it to be in the movie before and it was cut but no one knew. The stokers refused to go into the lab for some reason so it was a nice haven for a little while. Something bad did definitely happen, however. They were resting down in the lab because they just ran on, through and across an ocean liner multiple times, and the crew members came back. This is bad because they had tools they could throw, and the lab was full of potions.

First thing was some binoculars thrown and it broke a bottle. This kept happening and bottles kept breaking. The Pups were stabbed by glass shards quite often and the blue lab was turning red. Eventually, there was a momentary stop in things breaking. The potions were all over the ground and getting stuck on Ryder's shoes and the pup's paws.

"Ok, ok. What do we do?" Chase spoke quickly.

"Uh, I mean we-we haven't looked at the uh, the hole yet." Zuzi responded, speaking just as quickly as Chase.

"Drop a bottle into it and test it." Rocky suggested, said calmly although he was not calm.

They did exactly as Rocky had said, Ryder grabbed a bottle and gently dropped it into the hole. It made a sound like it was rolling down a slide and not just falling straight down. They heard the sound of glass breaking about five seconds after the bottle was dropped. Putting it all together it was a safe ride. Considering how Rico hid the exits in the other films, it might be the way out. You can't really blame Rico though, because he never intended for anyone to get as far as they did.

"What other choice do we have, honestly?" Zuzi asked, without studders too.

"Let's go, I guess." Marshall said, and it was obvious he was very nervous.

First into the hole was Rocky as a volunteer who, when he hit the bottom told the rest it was safe to come down. All the rest went into the hole, which was as expected like a slide pretty much. When they reached the bottom they were in the absolute bottom of the ship. No windows, and clearly one of Rico's strange little rooms he puts into these places that, clearly should not be in these places. Strange sort of surfboard kinda shape and not so high of a room. It was much smaller than expected.

"Ah, hey your here. Honestly off of everything you had done in my previous films I expected you to get here. The number of things I could've done to you before is much more than what I did. Besides knowing you, heh, you probably would've survived it. But here? What can you possibly do in here? It's an empty room. What can I do here? Well, just hang out and you'll soon enough figure it out." Rico monologued.

"I think it's safe to say this isn't the way out." Chase very anxiously said.

"We need a way out of here somehow!" Ryder exclaimed. "Skye?"

"Yeah but, what about you guys?" Skye explained showing concern.

"Could you carry any of us up?" Marshall questioned.

"I think, but, how long until Rico does whatever it is he plans to do?" Skye asked.

"Don't know don't care we need to go!" Chase stated, getting Skye to bark out her wings and get ready.

"Tucker, you're actually the smallest so you should go first." Ryder said, no one ever said smallest first but it made sense.

Tucker didn't actually want to go first. He wasn't the kind of person to throw himself in front of a bullet but he thought the others had more of a reason to go. As they were all friends, and he just didn't feel right going first. Shyness can get in the way of a lot of things though, and he was just too shy to say anything about it. He ended up going with Skye. He grabbed her paw and she flew him up with ease and immediately flew back down to get the next.

"Zuzi next." Ryder called out.

"Uh-uh." She replied, "Someone else go. I have an idea as to how to get out if Rico does what I think."

"Okay, then it's Rocky next." Ryder explained.

Rocky was taken up the tube just as Tucker was and dropped off as such as well. Skye flew back down to go grab the next pup who was presumably Marshall.

"Isn't Zuzi smaller than you?" Tucker asked Rocky, for once he actually got passed his shyness and let his curiosity take over.

"She is." Rocky answered, "She said she has a plan though. Never told us what it was only that she had it. She didn't want to come up because she had that plan so I was next."

"Ah, ok." Tucker replied.

Right after that, the ship started listing very quickly. It for sure was not sinking because it was way to fast for that. By the way, the ship was moving, it was probably a wave pushing the ship the way it was, but many times. Rico managed to create waves to constantly hit the ship. The ship ended up rotating to a list every time it hit and it stayed at an angle for a fair amount of time. Rico had the pups trapped in a room of nothing and pelted the ship with waves, this was his plan.

"Hey, it's starting. Good luck out there." Rico added, seemingly taking no notice to the two escaped pups. Both Rocky and Tucker were in bad situations too as they were in a room of broken glass with a ship that can't and won't stay upright. They got stabbed a lot and were very much bleeding but they left the lab and tried to keep themselves from sliding everywhere. They also were hoping that whatever Zuzi's idea was it was keeping them from continuously ramming into the metal walls of the room.

Skye never came back either so she was also stuck in the room. All but Tucker and Rocky were inside a tiny room with no escape. The only hope they had was whatever Zuzi's plan was.

The absolute happiness that swept over Tucker and Rocky when they saw Ryder come out of the hole in the wall where the lab was, was exponential. They all got out, how they did it wasn't to be known until there was time to be told. With all of them in the same room, they often bumped into each other and once Skye knocked Zuzi into the railing of the staircase.

When it all eventually stopped, Zuzi plopped straight onto the ground in exhaustion. She was also hurt more than either of them, having only three legs it was hard to do all that was done and she very often fell over and into things. Skye's wing was also somehow bent and neither Tucker nor Rocky know how.

"So how in the world did you get out of there?" Rocky asked Ryder, very confused and curious.

"Zuzi's idea is what got us out." Ryder started, "What we did was when the ship listed, and due to the room being so small, we were able to climb onto the wall when it turned and got into and climbed up the slide from there."

"That sounds like an action movie, not a horror movie." Rocky joked, but still amazed at the escape.

"We had to help Zuzi up because it was pretty much impossible for her to do it with her missing leg." Marshall explained.

"Zuzi's always getting us out of situations." Chase said, "But she rarely does something for herself."

"She lost a leg what do you expect from her?" Marshall questioned.

"No, no that's not my point." Chase answered, "It's that, we'd be nowhere without her and she'd be nowhere without us."

"Yeah, and what have I done?" Tucker spoked, a little down on himself.

"You saved Zuzi, who saved us." Skye told him reassuringly.

"Yeah, I guess I did do that." Tucker said, and that did make him feel better about himself really.

"Fucking hell!" Rico randomly shouted. "Every single goddamn place I send you to you end up getting out with nothing more than a little sweat!"

"Then you should let us go." Chase responded, "If we survive everything what use do you have keeping us here?"

"I got two of you don't get cocky." Rico said, but now all the sudden he just sounded tired.

"No, you got one. That one killed the other." Chase argued.

"It would be preferable if you shut up," Rico responded, angry again.

Chase rolled his eyes and did as Rico said. He wasn't really scared as Rico was probably using all his might to try to kill them already, so there wasn't a lot more than he could do. The pups and Ryder began to contemplate what to do.

"Rico wouldn't make this room so secret and then not use it, right?" Skye questioned.

"It wasn't really that secret." Rocky replied, "The electric thing wasn't hidden and it was obvious it was to be used for something."

"What about the gems?" Marshall asked Rocky, as the gems were hidden.

"It was obvious something went into the holders we just had to find it. I wouldn't consider that secret." Rocky replied.

"Hang on a second..." Ryder started, "The gems powered the machine's electricity, right?"

"Yeah, why?" Marshall answered.

"So the gems have to have some form of their own power, right?" Ryder questioned.

"I guess so." Marshall replied, "But what use would it have. We don't even know how to control it."

"So many different things, Marshall." Ryder answered, "We could try using it on the potions in the lab, using it to power the ship, etcetera."

"Then let's take one out and see what we can do!" Marshall responded.

"You should probably take both, just in case." Skye suggested.

Ryder went and picked up both of the gems from out of the electric machine, and, while watching the thing quickly lose its electrical strength, walked into the lab with the pups. Including Zuzi who got up from exhaustion to follow them into the lab. Ryder dropped a gem into a bit of potion on the ground and quickly backed up. It was risky indeed, but it did nothing either way. He tried putting the other gem in the same potion but still no dice.

"If it doesn't do anything on one potion it shouldn't on another." Ryder reasoned.

They turned around and almost left the room before Skye found something. It was yet another one of Rico's audio recordings. Skye showed the others and then turned it on.

* * *

 _"I was, in fact, born in Canada. I am Russian as you can probably tell by my accent. It's not a strong accent though and that's because the Russian in my family goes a while back. The accent just kept carrying over to each generation because that's how we taught each other. It's slowly fading away though and I'm sure the accent will eventually disappear completely. Anyway, on to what I actually want to talk about."_

 _"I am no longer around any of my family members but I still keep tabs on them. I actually moved to Escapade City away from my family. I did not move very far, but I moved. My dad left me, uh, I have very faint memories of him actually, but I don't know where he is at now. I have one sibling, my sister, Daisy. I was the only male in the household after my dad left."_

 _"Okay, okay, off topic again. My family supports me in everything I do and I sometimes go to visit them. One memory I have, which is what I've wanted to tell you about when I started this. By the way, my sister moved out as well, just in the same city as my mom. When I went to visit my sister, I saw that her little house was actually on fire, um. For those who don't know dogs are able to get their own houses and live independently. Uh at least around here, dunno about other places. Their houses are just to be smaller than a house owned by a human."_

 _"Long story short, the fire was put out and she lost quite a few belongings. I helped her as much as I could after the fire, which Daisy had no idea how it started. It took her a little while to get settled back in but it eventually happened. Not really as much to talk about as I thought actually. I actually got a little to close to the original fire and burnt myself a bit. That's something."_

 _"I've wasted enough of your time already so I don't wanna rant on anymore about my sister's house fire."_

* * *

"Not sure your family would be supportive of you killing people." Chase said, almost as soon as the recording ended.

"That really didn't tell us much." Skye spoke.

"Rico has a sister that's what I got out of that." Chase replied.

"Well, guess we try to power the ship now." Ryder suggested.

"How would we go about that?" Marshall questioned.

"Put it in a coal pile maybe?" Chase answered Marshall's question.

"Wha- oh yeah we could try that," Marshall responded, not knowing what Chase meant for a second.

With that said they did as suggested by Chase, they all followed Ryder and he put a gem in the pile and it did nothing. He then put the second gem in and this time something happened, not what they expected but something did happen. What they were expecting was for the ship to propel forward, what happened was more Rico magic. Evil versions of each of them appeared with pup packs, clothing and all, unless they didn't have one of course, and they could only be differentiated by smoke coming off of the evil ones.

"Now what do we do?" Skye questioned.

"I'll take the gems out!" Ryder replied, quickly going over and, as he said taking the gems away.

When he took them out, the evil pups faded away fairly anticlimactically. They noticed something, something purple-ish inside the fading mirrors of themselves. They each looked at each other with an understanding of what it was. The portals were always purple and most of the time within a very strong monster. The weird thing was that each one of them had one, they thought that maybe each of them he had one but they'll cross that bridge when they come to it.

"Each of you fights yourself, we'll see what happens here." Ryder commanded as he put the gems back and the mirror images reformed.

Chase immediately shot a net at his mirror and it actually worked. It actually trapped it so Chase could attack however possible until the mirror escapes. Marshall had a water battle with his mirror for a while but ended up just brawling since Marshall didn't really have a lot in his arsenal for fighting. Skye and her mirror couldn't really do anything but brawl since Skye had a broken wing and that transferred over to her mirror. Rocky would've been using all sorts of tools and creativity but Rico stole it all so now he had nothing but paws and claws. Zuzi and the mirror weren't getting anything done with only three legs and nothing special to fight with, same goes for Tucker just with a little more action since he actually has all his limbs. Ryder was obviously fist fighting his mirror since he obviously didn't anticipate Rico sending them through hell so he didn't bring anything.

Chase just kept battering and bettering the mirror until it just poofed into a tiny portal which just flew up into the air after the fact. Apparently, his repeated abuse was enough to kill the thing. He looked around and decided upon trying to help Zuzi due to her troubles, and it probably being the easiest to go for, for now. As the others continued fighting to no avail Chase ran over to Zuzi and shot a net at the one with smoke coming off of it. He did it all right and the mirrored Zuzi was trapped in his net. Zuzi didn't say anything and nor did Chase as they both did all they could to kill this three-legged mirror as soon as possible. It died quicked than Chase's Mirror for obvious reasons and the same thing happened with the portal, it appeared and flew upwards.

They looked around for who to go for next and saw Skye starting to look fatigued, and they went to help her. Chase shot the net and the whole process repeated except the mirror actually managed to escape the net and attack Skye before Chase netted it again. The hit left a scar on Skye's face. The Skye mirror eventually died and the portal flew up again.

They tried to find who to go for next and Rocky was actually pinned by his mirror and was getting repeatedly smacked by it. Chase shot a tennis ball, at it as the cannon was already out, and it knocked the mirror off. As Chase netted it and the group of three began attacking it Rocky just lied on the ground presumably out of pain for the abuse he just endured. The mirror died, the portal flies, onto the next one.

Only Tucker, Ryder, and Marshall left. Ryder was perfect and neither Mashall nor Tucker was having issues so Chase began rushing towards Marshall since he was closer than the others. The cycle did as before and the Marshall mirror died, no issues. The portal went up and they advanced to Tucker.

Tucker's mirror actually dodged Chase's net and then proceeded to pummel Chase straight to the ground and slammed his head in the the metal floor over and over before Tucker managed to get over to his mirror and kick him off. Zuzi, Skye, and Tucker all stalled off the mirror Tucker for a little while until Chase managed enough strength to get up and shoot his net at Tucker's mirror. This time, it wasn't dodged and they finally killed this mirror. They looked over and say that both Ryder and Marshall's mirrors were gone as well, so now all the mirrors were gone.

When Chase walked over to Ryder and Marshall he asked, "Did you take down your clones?"

"Ryder finished his and then came over to help me with mine." Marshall answered, "How was yours?"

"Uh, Chase finished his and- helped us a-all out after." Zuzi answered.

Before anyone could say anything after that a portal slowly decended into the room. Nothing special it just floated in and sat itself down. What a relief it was.

"So all the smaller ones must've combined making this one." Chase said.

"How would Rico be able to use this then?" Marshall questioned, finding a flaw in Chase's theory.

"He has stokers." Rocky answered, calmly.

"Can you goddamn stop?! Blood has already been spilt and death has come to one of you so why don't you all just die?" Rico asked, not really so angry sounding compared to other times.

"We're getting out of here Rico, no matter how much you try to stop is." Chase said like authority.

"Good luck." Rico replied, then disappearing.

"Alright. Now we just go in here and, do as we always do." Ryder told, in a tone that just shows his exhaustion from all this.

They all walked into the portal and prepared for the next hellscape.

-Titanic Terror - Rico Winter

* * *

 _Took a while, oops._


	11. Death rush

_Holy shit I'm such a slacker. Here it is though._

* * *

The brief intervention given to Ryder and the pups by the portal ride always gave them time to think, because it didn't instantly teleport them to their next destination. It took time and while it's happening they are conscious. They all had different thoughts of what's happened or what's next, about Rubble or about Zuma. One thing for sure is that they're all concerned about something.

They landed in a room full of wooden crates. That's all they could really see aside from walls. It was like a maze of crates that they were just in the middle of. None of the crates were stacked in any way, they were just too large for them to move or see over. It made little sense but that's completely normal at this point.

"Do you all like pancakes? I like pancakes. Maybe not in the same sense as you think though." Rico spoke.

"What?" Chase questioned.

"You'll see, shepherd. Or maybe you won't. You might be dead when it happens." Rico replied, to Chase and everyone else's dismay.

Rico didn't waste any time in trying to kill them. Some drone Esq machine flew right up above the gang and it had a crate its grasp. They all saw where this was going. The drone dropped the crate and everyone immediately scattered. It was a small crate so it was easy to get away from. When the crate hit the ground it broke open and has nothing in it.

"That's what I mean, good cop." Rico said.

Rico then sent a swarm of drones with crates on them all dropped at random times. The crates weren't always dropped directly on them either, some were lead to where they were going to be so they were always on their toes.

Zuzi was having a hard time escaping since she has three legs and that obviously makes it harder to run away from falling crates for an extended period of time. Often tripping or not being able to run very fast got her in a lot of close calls. Once a little too close... One time she tripped right underneath a drone that was just about to drop its crate. With only three legs it's pretty difficult to get up. As she attempted to get up the drone dropped the crate right over the top of her and she just wasn't going to be able to get up in time. Rocky saw her fall over and luckily happened to be very close. He quickly ran over and pushed her out of the way of the crate. He got up and tried to run out of the way. Unfortunately, all he could do was get up. Before he was Immediately back down, squished under a huge wooden crate. At least he died a hero.

"How nice if him to save that box's life. His body cushioned the fall so the box wouldn't break! And he also saved you but you aren't important." Rico said to Zuzi.

Zuzi couldn't really think. She still had to avoid crates with only three legs but her head was spinning. She had made friends with all the pups but Rocky was the best of them. She had time to think once the crates finally stopped falling, though.

"Rocky? Zuzi? Are you okay?" Zuzi heard Ryder's voice say from around the corner, seemed like he already found the other four pups.

When they cut the corner and saw Zuzi, she said, "I'm fine. But..." She then gestured towards the crate that killed Rocky.

They all saw the faintly noticeable deceased Rocky under his killer. They had already seen Rubble get killed. That didn't make Rocky's death any less hard for them. Zuzi explained to them what happened to the best of her ability but she shuddered quite a lot due to all the thoughts and the pre-existing studdering issue. They all let their emotions out, but not for long as they knew they had to move forward before Rico tried something while they're vulnerable.

Zuzi, although she knew it wasn't a good thing to do, she couldn't help but blame herself for Rocky's death. If she wouldn't have tripped he wouldn't have died, simple as that. She also wondered why did he save her? He's smart he should've expected to not be able to make it out from under it. He had way more of a reason to live. He was best friends with all but her and Tucker and he was a part of a rescue team back where he lived. She was just a pup they found in Rico's hospital. She saved them a couple of times, yeah but even without her help they could've eventually figured out what to do or some of them would've survived at least. There weren't enough doctors in the hospital to kill them all so some of them could've run, and with Skye being small she would've most likely survived so she could've flown most of them out of the ship. She saved some of them sure but she killed one too. It's was a lot of bad thoughts to take in. But knowing somebody took their life to save hers, raised her spirits a little bit.

"This is pretty much just a maze with boxes for walls." Chase said.

"If only my wings weren't bent." Skye started, "I could just fly around to see everything."

"Mazes have never been my strong point." Marshall pointed.

"Well we're traveling in a pack, so you don't have to do the maze." Skye told him.

"That's good." Marshall replied.

Rico didn't really try anything after the crate storm. He just let them go through the maze without much of a threat. It was a good time to talk amongst themselves. Talking about whatever they felt like really. Rico, home, the end, the place, really just whatever came to mind. This felt more like a game you would play on a piece of paper than the deadly circus act that it was. At the moment at least.

Nobody knew why Rico was taking so long but a couple of them had a hunch that he had something planned. Rico had been left silent before, many times but this time it felt different. Rico had only done one thing to them and that was drop the crates from the drones that's it.

They did eventually get out of the maze of crates and ended up seeing that where they were still would not be revealed to them. At the end of the crate maze, they were greeted by the door, the door to the outside. It was open but all they could see was fog.

"It's at the end for a reason." Marshall explained, "I think we've gotta take it."

"What else are we to supposed to do?" Chase agreed.

"Seems like a trap to me." Tucker announced.

"How?" Chase questioned.

"No, yeah it makes sense to me too." Ryder pitched in agreement with Tucker.

"Rico could be luring us over there, to make us vulnerable. It doesn't seem... Rico too, put a random door with only fog at the other side, at the end of a long maze and it not be a trap. Feels off." Tucker explained.

"Goddamn, you're all too smart for this." Rico spoke, "It is a trap yeah now continue on."

They did what he said. Not because he said it but because it was obviously the only course of action. They walked around the strange room and found another door on the left side, you could see the room inside this one though. They walked in with a little bit of caution and finally figured out where they were. They were in a cliche factory. You know, the ones that are just a bunch of conveyor belts with loads of boxes and stuff all around. Horror movies are always cliche so Rico really isn't in the wrong. I mean ignoring that he murders people he's not in the wrong.

"What was the point if the other room?" Chase questioned.

"Nobody will ever get inside the brain of Rico." Zuzi mumbled, it was loud enough for everyone to hear though.

"Die." Rico spoke, and not in a serious tone like he was gonna try to kill them just more of an honestly joking tone which was very new.

"Okay, we need to figure out what we're supposed to do here." Ryder pitched, and everyone agreed.

"There really doesn't seem to be much apart from boxes in this place." Chase responded, "Dunno what we can do."

"We escaped a hospital by becoming a bat, flying through a hole in the wall then becoming fish and going down a water pipe." Marshall replied.

"Point taken."

The search was on, looking around the room, in piles of boxes, everywhere basically. They didn't know what they were looking for, or even if it existed, but they persisted. Persisted until Rico finally decided it was time to try to attack them again. Not drones this time but, some sort of mecha bird, many of them. It was robotic for sure and had the shape of an everyday robin. Quite big too, around about three quarters the size of Chase. They came around, swooped at them and then knocked a pile of boxes onto them all. Not very difficult to get out of a cardboard box pile.

For all the boxes the birds knocked around, it revealed to them that there was absolutely nothing of use in this room. One of the birds actually managed to pick up Marshall and fly him up and drop him down, Ryder was there to catch him though.

They went into the next room and it ended up just being the same thing as the room they were just in. Boxes on conveyors. What's the point? Anyway, the birds followed them into the next room, most of them followed. One of them missed the door and fill force slammed into the wall. Nothing if interest came out of it just all the metal and innards of the machine.

They couldn't find a way out, and none of them could even think of an idea of how to get out. The only idea was a door and, well yeah. The amount of time they spent looking around was not extraordinary by any means, and actually quite short when it comes to what it usually took. They found a picture of a factory in the factory, which seemed like it could only be the factory they were in and it had smokestacks with smoke coming out of them.

"Smoke had to have come from somewhere." Ryder explained, "There's more to this factory than boxes."

It seemed like they'd explored the entire factory so they had no idea where the smokestack could be, but they pressed on. It took them a long while of searching but eventually, they found the secret room that existed because of course, it did. A bird rammed into a wall and destroyed it revealing the smokestack room.

"Why would you hide this room in a factory?" Chase questioned.

"Because Rico." Skye responded.

"That's our answer for everything that happens here." Chase said, with a hint of boredom in his voice.

"And a good one at that." Skye replied.

They stepped into the room and for some undefinable reason, the wall on the other side of the room was gone and out there, was a city, not the burning one they first went to, and not the ghost town, but an actual city without issues. Except there was one strange issue, it was Escapade City, the city Rico lives in, and it was deserted.

"You got out the unconditional way but, welcome!" Rico told them.

"Where do we go? Escapade City is huge!" Marshall asked.

"The theatre seems like a good place to start." Skye replied, "Or end."

"Or end indeed, sister." Rico jumped in, no one understood sister but guys say bro so whatever.

They hopped down from the factory which was a very small drop, and it was obvious that this factory is not in Escapade City. They had no idea where they were in the city but they knew that with time they would figure it out and be able to get to the theatre from there. They obviously didn't know the city because they didn't live there and had no reason to even go there in the first place but, they drove through the thing do they just looked for familiar roads and landmarks. Zuzi knew more about the place than they did but not by much. It was enough for her to recognize a road sooner than them and lead them on the path. She was being pretty quiet but at least she helped them here.

"Well, we're here." Ryder said as they approached the theatre.

"This feels so weird." Marshall started, "We're going into the theatre that put us through all of this already."

"If we have to go through another bunch of movies..." Chase started and ended.

"How about we go inside and see if Skye was right." Ryder suggested, and they all agreed.

Ryder opened the doors of the theatre to reveal... well, the theatre, the front room of it at least. With not a single difference spotted they moved into the projection room, which is when the crazies came out. The door slammed behind them and in the room was a portal. It was just like the exit portals except instead of purple it was red. Not super bright but not dark either.

"Go on in." Rico said, "Or sit here and decompose, your choice."

"Let's go then." Ryder commanded as they subsequently walked into the red portal.

It landed them in a wooden house. There was dried blood all over the walls, and most of the windows were broken. Furniture was scarce and when there was furniture it was likely broke. They walked around for around about ten seconds before Zuma jumped in from one of the windows with Rocky's pup pack on and his drill out. Zuma ran at them when suddenly they teleported to another place, this time they were in a cave. The cave had many pathways to go but before they even had a chance to debate which way to go, Zuma came darting in yet again with Rocky's claw. They now realize what they stumbled into.

"How are we supposed to get out of here?" Chase questioned as they promptly ran from Zuma.

"You aren't." Rico answered.

They then teleported yet again, now on top of a mountain. A pretty short mountain but a mountain nonetheless. Not really steep or pointy either, in fact, they seemed to be on a flat hiking trail of sorts. With, of course, blood.

"There is a way out there absolutely has to be." Tucker took initiative, "Rico had to have tested this somehow, and that means he also needed a way to get out as well."

"What?" Marshall asked, confused.

"Rico had to get in and out, himself." Skye simply explained.

Marshall couldn't respond before Zuma came round yet again. He ran towards them from the higher area of the hiking path so they ran down it. A small amount of time passed and yet again they teleported away to another location. This time, it was a lot different. They were in a car, a four-seater white car with a top speed of, according to the speedometer, one hundred and ten miles per hour. All the front windows were up, while the backs were about one-quarter of the way down. The car seemed to be driving itself to wherever it felt and it was going at about fifty-five to sixty-five miles per hour along a quite frankly narrow road. It did have a sunroof and its headlights were on in the darkness.

They could all fit since four-seaters were meant for four humans, not pups. Much smaller. The way they landed was Ryder in the driver's seat, Tucker in the passenger's, Chase and Zuzi behind the driver's and Marshall and Skye behind the passengers. Chase and Skye each by the doors.

This time when Zuma came he jumped onto Chase's side of the car, broke the window with Rocky's drill and tried to get Chase through the window. Chase was able to lean away from it for long enough for them to teleport again. When they were teleported they were sent back to the house. Exact same house, and the same setting. Same Zuma entrance too. Zuma wasn't hard to avoid under any of the circumstances but he made it hard to think or contemplate how to get out of this.

There was a picture framed on the wall of a family. Dad, mom, and daughter which looked like a normal happy family. They had no idea what it was about but it told them that his house had inhabitants at one point. Maybe Rico just put it there for no reason, also possible.

As they teleported to the cave for the second time, Ryder said, "There's definitely a puzzle here."

"Oh boy." Marshall sighed.

"Puzzles get harder when there is a murderer chasing you," Skye added.

"Mhm." Tucker mumbled as Zuma ran from the same tunnel.

This time they decided to go down one of the tunnels, which just seemed long and endless until they teleported to the mountain again. Walking down the mountain immediately to both look and avoid Zuma, they found a shovel near the bottom. It was out of reach and probably out of range to run to before teleportation, but it was meaningful because, why have a shovel on a mountain? There was also a pickaxe but that actually made some sense.

Back to the car, Chase's window was still broken, and Ryder found out the buttons function as if the car was off, along with the keys being absent. No items located in the car other than a red hoodie on the floor. Chase was already leaned towards Zuzi when Zuma jumped on and used the drill. He really was no threat to them in the car.

Teleporting back to the house, they quickly split to try to actually find something, and they did. Chase lifted up the couch cushions and found some keys with the name "Martin" on them. They couldn't pick them up in time before Zuma jumped in again and ran at them. Back to the cave they collectively decided to see if every tunnel was seemingly endless, they ran as a group, of course, they aren't stupid like every other horror movie character, although it would take a while. The one they ran down this time, did appear to be endless. They didn't see Zuma this time either.

Not much to say about the mountain, it was just empty and meaningless. Nothing new was found, and Zuma didn't come close to them. They were starting to get a bit exhausted though, plus Zuzi was missing a leg, not helping. The mountain appeared completely useless. Although they were still yet to go up to where Zuma came from.

The car was always a very nice break. Although knowing they will probably eventually end up needing something from it. For now though, until they get the keys, this was a nice rest. Ryder, the only one there who had actually ridden in a traditional vehicle before, took for granted the seats in a car, but the seats in that car were the most comfortable thing he or any of the pups had been in the presence of for quite a while. Along with a break from all the running and walking, along with having no food and the last drinks were in the hospital, where Tucker was not, it was a great place. Aside from Zuma literally wanting Chase's guts right now but meh.

Speaking of Tucker, he was almost a mystery to Ryder and the pups. He rarely said anything and pretty much just follows them around. When he does help them he seems pretty smart it's just rare that it happens. The exact story of how he was found is known to only him and Zuzi. The others were told what happened but it wasn't the absolute full one. He was supposedly in the tunnels because Rico put him there multiple times, and he just found Zuzi, but hat doesn't make much sense for one reason. If Rico could teleport the two of them there when they escaped, why didn't he just put them back? Odd.

Anyways, back at the house, they all ran immediately towards the couch. Ryder lifted the cushion, grabbed the keys, and then they proceeded to dodge Zuma as usual. Now they just had to hope the keys work or even fit the car.

When they arrived at the cave, instead of running down any one of the tunnels, Marshall had something to say.

"In the photo in the house, I saw the dad had a nametag on him. The name was Martin." He said.

"So these keys belong to him." Ryder thought out loud, "There's a story here."

"A story that, quite frankly, I don't care to know." Chase exclaimed.

"Who knows, Chase, maybe the story could help us get out of here." Skye explained as Zuma ran out of the tunnel.

Escaping Zuma and teleporting to the mountain, they decided to yet again run down the mountain path. They didn't find anything new on the mountain, but they did find a city in the distance. It didn't look like Escapade City or any city they new really, it had houses a bank, a park, so it was a pretty normal city. No skyscrapers or anything but by the looks of it, it wasn't too bad of a place to live.

After finding absolutely nothing of use anywhere else, they finally arrived where they wanted to be the car. Although the place seemed empty, just a car on a pretty bland road in the nighttime, anything can be useful in a Rico Winter film. It made little to no sense to use keys on an already moving and functioning car, but it was driving itself and its possible it could be doing that while off. It's also a possibility that if it is on already, they could turn it off. What use doing either would grant them is impossible to know, but they tried anyway.

Ryder put the keys into the car turned them, and the engine revved up. It sounded like they did, in fact, turn the car on. It didn't change anything that was happening, only that they could now hear the engine. Ryder then tried pressing some buttons to see if they would work now that the car was on, and they did. The radio was nothing but static and they found no need to roll the windows down or open the sunroof but the options were there if needed. Ryder tried the gas and brake pedals but neither of them yielded any results.

They appeared to making progress. Although they saw no use in what they had done, the showed that things could be done, and there was probably a puzzle here. It wasn't the most pleasing or effective progress, but figuring progress was possible was huge to breaking the lock to this place.

Slow but steady.


	12. Darkness

After they were teleported back to the house, they didn't really know what to do from this point. Sure they figured out that progress could be made they just didn't have a clue of what new progress could be made. Around the house, no amount of staring at furniture, clocks, windows anything was gonna get them anywhere. The hunt was on again yet the house seemed meaningless passed the keys. There really didn't seem to be many places to hide anything, and where there were Ryder or a pup had checked it. Nothing was found before Zuma came in at them.

Once at the cave, nobody spoke a word so they ran down a tunnel as usual. Just as always nothing found and nothing special happened. A lot of nothing special happened actually. They did multiple loops from house to cave to mountain to car over and over. The only thing they found was scenery there for a while.

Although not useful to getting out, Ryder discovered something extraordinarily strange. He was just sitting there by a wall and a clock fell on him. Already strange as to why it fell now as opposed to any other time but that's not what's important. What was strange was what it did. When Ryder went to pick up the clock, he saw that Chase, who was right behind him had completely ceased all movement.

"Chase?" Ryder called, getting no answer or movement.

He walked over to him, only to look over and see that every other pup had stopped too. He tried to shake Chase, but it was as if he was a wall, he wouldn't budge even the slightest bit no matter how hard Ryder pushed. Basically a clock had just stopped time by falling on Ryder, how wonderful. He thought that maybe if it stopped time for him when it hit him, it might allow the others to move if it touched them, and it did. He touched Chase with the clock and he started moving with no idea as to what just happened.

"Uh Ryder, why aren't any of them moving?" Chase questioned, sounding seriously concerned and confused at the same time.

"Strange story, I'll tell you soon just give me a second." Ryder explained as he went to unfreeze the other pups.

After he had done so, he got them all in a group by where the clock had fallen on him and told them the short story. He also had told them about how absolutely nothing was moveable save for the clock. Now it seems like a good thing, first of all they get a good rest from running around, they get time to brief, and Zuma isn't coming after them. However, they had no idea how to restart time, which might be kinda important to getting out of there, considering they couldn't move anything or get to the other areas like the cave.

"Ok this is a good break but how do we stop it?" Skye asked Ryder.

"I don't know yet." He replied, "I'm sure there's a way I just don't know it yet."

"Maybe break it?" Marshall suggested.

"It didn't break when it fell onto Ryder, and I don't exactly think we want to break it since that might leave us stuck like this." Tucker said. "Maybe, just, put it back?"

"Can't hurt to try." Ryder replied as he went and put it back where it fell from.

Stupid enough it worked, Marshall moved a table and Zuma ran after them. Damn had they every been happy to see a murderous Zuma. They wished he wasn't murderous but to see him moving at all was good. Anyway they did teleport to the cave and all around the loop again without finding anything.

It, again took quite a while before anything else was found, but finally they did find something that seemed like it'd be useful. Marshall saw that in the family portrait on the wall in the house that Martin's nametag was shiny, unlike any other place on the picture. He climbed up on the couch below it to get a look. When he touched it, it got pushed in like a button. The button revealed a button. In the wall next to where Marshall had done that a small circular hole was in the wall. Looking deep into the hole Marshall saw there was a cliche red button. He couldn't figure anything passed that before Zuma arrived but this was obviously great news. At the cave Marshall again told them not to go down a tunnel so he could share his discovery.

"The nametag, the one that says Martin was like a button, and it opened a hole in the wall. In the hole I saw a red button. No way we can reach it though." He explained.

"So we need something to hold and push it with then." Ryder replied, as Zuma began chasing them.

After being teleported to the very temporary safety of the mountain, they continued to talk about the button.

"Nothing much you can use other than a stick or a pole." Chase added.

"Where could we find either of those?" Skye questioned.

"No idea but we have to be on the lookout." Ryder said as Zuma began to chased them.

Obviously not finding a stick or a pole in a car they then teleported to the house, where they found a broken table, and used its detached leg to hit the button. Yet again the complexity continued as hitting the button opened an actual part of a different wall straight open. As Zuma ran after them they ran into the newly opened room. It had two beds, one bigger than the other by just a little bit. There was another red button just sitting on the wall which Marshall hit withoutb really thinking and it closed the door to the room. Zuma on the outside they had time to look around the room. Filled with bags of money, nothing seemed really special about the room, just an absurdly well hidden room with money, like a secret stash.

"Why haven't we teleported yet?" Skye questioned, as it had been well passed the usual time.

"I have no idea but its probably to do with this room." Ryder suggested.

"There's nothing in here, what's so special about it?" Skye responded, and immediately after a hole appeared on the floor by the wall.

"Look harder." Zuzi smiled, standing up from bending under the big bed which had a blue button under it.

"Why is this so stupidly complicated." Chase questioned, shaking his head and walking towards the staircase that had just appeared under the floor.

"I could ask the same for you just without t-the complicated." Zuzi joked.

"I'm so stupidly?" Chase joked back.

"We all have our, uh, wordings." Zuzi smiled as she followed the rest of them down the stairs.

Zuzi, who had been silent for quite sometime had all the sudden just jumped back to her joking self. It's astonishing she was able to even stay silent during the whole Zuma parade as it's not so easy to run with only three legs but she managed. Why she was quiet at all was confusing enough, but for her to just have a sudden comeback made no sense. It was only for that short time so maybe it was just for then but that seemed improbable.

Still without teleporting, and without Zuma they reached the end of the secret tunnel. At the other side, it was the cave they would've teleported too if it didn't stop for whatever reason.

"So they're connected." Skye spoke everyone's thoughts.

"At least these two are, dunno about the others yet." Ryder explained.

"Why does Rico have to make it so complicated?" Marshall asked, "He had to do this too."

"I'm not sure we'll ever get an explanation of most of the things Rico does." Chase replied.

"So, do we have to run down each of the tunnels?" Skye questioned.

"Seems like the only thing we can do." Ryder shrugged.

They then took off into every last tunnel. The end of all of them usually just ended in just more money. They eventually came to a one that didn't have any money, and, Chase using the flashlight he had, found a pickaxe sitting there.

"Welp, have fun Ryder." Zuzi smirked and sat down, the other pups followed.

"Thanks for the kind words." Ryder groaned as he picked up the pickaxe.

"This is gonna take a while, you wanna do something?" Marshall suggested.

"Nothing much we can do, there's not really anything in this tunnel." Chase responded.

"We got our mouths." Marshall replied, causing Zuzi to kinda cover her mouth like hiding a laugh.

"What is there to talk about?" Chase questioned.

"We've been running through multiple life threatening places, all of which are different, two of our friends are dead and one is brainwashed. Are you telling me there's nothing to talk about?" Marshall retorted.

"I would like to talk about something happier, since everything you just said is pretty traumatic." Chase explained, reasonable as well.

"Eh, fine." Marshall sat down again.

"We still do have our mouths." Zuzi said in a joking sort of fashion.

"What?" Chase questioned.

"Don't worry about it." Zuzi replied, seemingly holding in a small laugh.

"Hey here's a non depressing topic, Zuzi you seem to be stuttering less." Chase spoke.

"Well I s-stutter much more on the fly." She replied, "Like-like when I'm improvising what to say."

"That why your jokes are rarely stuttered?" Chase questioned.

"Yepper." She answered.

"Not really a happy question but I was wondering what do we do about Rico after we get out?" Skye questioned.

"I guess we just cross that bridge when we come to it." Chase replied after a couple seconds.

Following this, the wall kinda collapsed onto Ryder, he got right back up and saw that on the other side was the outside world. Stepping out they realized that it was the mountain they were standing on. They were down by the pickaxes and stuff they had saw before. They decided it was a better idea to go down rather than up so they went down the mountain. Looking around for a place to go, or the car they wandered into the town they had overseen previously. It seemed like a happy place, nothing out of the ordinary aside from the absolute absence of life but that's not the point. It wasn't the biggest town, kinda surprising it even had a bank and a park of its own, seemed like it only deserved one. They didn't wanna wander too far, since it didn't make sense for the exit to be too far away.

All they did was walk to each edge of the city and go back if they didn't find anything. If where they had entered was the West they found a sort of dirt road on the East side. The road looked somewhat similar to the one the car drove one and although many dirt roads existed. They decided to check it out since they really had nothing better to do. Mistakes were made by walking on the road though.

Good news and horrible news, good news is they found the car. Bad news is that they found it because it came flying down the road. Chase being in the absolute middle of the road couldn't get out of the way in time and got smacked hearing a little whimper followed by silence. Three dead now.

"God forbid." Zuzi said as Chase's body finished rolling.

"I don't wanna see that." Marshall cried turning and walking away from Chase's body.

They didn't spend as much time mourning as they had already lost two they realized there isn't anything to do and that they just had to except it. He's gone, no way to change it. After they had finished they all went over to the now blood stained car. It had came and gone multiple times as if it were on a specific route. They did all manage to get in, and without Chase it was a much easier fit.

The keys still remained in the car and still rotated with the car on. They rode in the car until the end of its route, all on a dirt road basically covered by trees. They eventually came to a stop and got out quickly as they expected it to go back down, and it did. They arrived at what appeared to be just a wide open place. Trees all around it but they were in a sort of circular area with no trees. Nothing was in it whatsoever either. It wasn't like the island where a giant ent was coming, It was just nothing. They sat there for a little while and still nothing happened.

"We really have to go into the forest don't we?" Marshall complained, thinking of everything that could go wrong in the dense forest.

"I guess so." Ryder responded, just as concerned as the rest of them.

Exactly as they said, they wondered into the forest. It was hard to see since the trees were really densely populated. Quite a few bushes too so it was also hard to walk around.

"Did you really think I was only gonna send your friend at you?" Rico spoke, as if he expected them to get here.

"Nobody said that." Zuzi mocked.

"You can shut the hell up." Rico responded.

"What if I don't wanna?" Zuzi replied.

"Then I'll do this." Rico answered, teleporting them all to a very recognizable place.

"Have fun all!" Rico said.

"It's still not over?" Marshall cried, looking around.

"This is about to get a whole lot harder..." Ryder explained, quite concerned.

Looking around at the burning city among them they could only assume that this was about to be another constant teleportation rushes. To and from all the previous films they went through. As if on queue, the second the group began walking, the wolves that were after them when they were in this city came along. They were able to take them out before, but then they had Rubble, Rocky and Chase's pup pack tools. Now only Skye and Marshall had a pack, which wasn't about to be useful, especially with Skye's wing being broken. So basically, all they could do was run.

Run they did, cutting multiple corners still without teleporting. One of the corners they cut had their zombified versions behind it. Just like they were before, but still unable to catch any of them. Zuzi and Tucker hadn't been in these experiences so they had to follow the others around. And following is hard to to with multiple things that could kill you just running after you. Tucker was constantly pushing Zuzi since it was kinda hard to run with the group when you lost one of your legs.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, they were teleported to the island. Already exhausted, they barely had a three second break before wasps began flying through the air, diving at them as they did before. It was hard for the wasps to see them in the trees, yet it was also difficult for them to see the wasps. They did survive though and onto the ents. Really this cycle just cotinued. I'll spare you the details but they just went through every place and ran way from everything that was there previously. The ghost town was odd though, since it never had any monsters. What happened there was the tornado came back and flew them all around again. The difference this time was both the size of the tornado and the amount of items that fell over. Previously in the ghost town just a couple things fell over like a mailbox or something. This time almost anything they walked passed had a chance to tip over. Tucker actually had a wooden plank to a house completely tip over onto him. He didn't know since this was the actual city part as opposed to the outskirts he was in when he was introduced to the pips. He walked on the sidewalk to close to a house and boom right on him. He couldn't get up and when he struggled he got a nail right through his back which, obviously hurt so he just sat there until the teleportation happened to the boat. He told no one about the nail so he just slightly bled and hurt more while running. After the cycle completed, they all knew they had to do something to get out, they just didn't know what. They never knew what and figured it out eventually so they had full confidence.

"This is so tiring." Skye panted.

"Well Rico screwed up making the ghost town basically empty. With the tornado being so much smaller it can't hurt us as much either." Ryder explained.

"Why does it always launch us to a cushioned area anyway?" Skye questioned.

"This is not the time for these questions but I assume it's for entertainment purposes." Zuzi explained.

"But doesn't he just-"

"Not the time!" Zuzi cut Skye off, and they continue running.

Finding nothing for such a long time, everything they found before seemed to be gone, looking around they found no teleporter on the island, no gems on the boat, etcetera. What they thought they were gonna be able to escape just like they did before was starting to look so much harder, or even impossible.

Impossible seemed unreasonable for them though, as using the logic from Tucker before there has to be a way out since Rico would have needed one. It was just gonna be so much more difficult then they anticipated. Even more difficult with a recent occurrence as well...

It was only inevitable Zuzi's missing leg would come back to kill her. On about the third cycle on the island she just couldn't do it anymore. Exhaustion got the best of her due to running on three legs and Tucker could only do so much. She got too tired and right then and there and ent stepped directly on her, causing her to not only die, but get squished like a pancake as blood erupted from below the ent's foot. Not a happy right from anyone. Although all they could do was flinch while being drenched in Zuzi's blood as if they did anything else they would've suffered the same fate. You always gotta find the positives in things but, the only positive about this is that the blood from Tucker's nail hole wouldn't be noticed by anyone now.

Zuzi's understanding of Rico's tendencies was always quite useful, although herself not being the most valuable asset, her brains more than made up for it. It was basically the same with Tucker except he knew less about Rico and more about just everything, although he rarely spoke it.

More and more running around finding what was effectively nothing other than random items on the ground like string which they were starting to think was what they were going to have to use to get out. Nothing of interest was found for quite some time.

They did actually eventually find something that seemed useful. It was a card, like a credit card like although it wasn't one. It seemed more like a Rico fabricated nametag. "Lavie Montenegro" was the name on he card. It was found in the burning city so most of it was charcoaled but they could also see that Lavie was female and married. What they would do with the card was completely over their heads but they found it and it seemed too specific to be nothing.

More and more running and exhaustion whilst finding nothing upon nothing they eventually found another nametag. They searched the city much harder after knowing the first card existed. Although having already sustained a couple injuries from the monsters that constantly chased them, they almost ignored the wolves, and never saw the zombies. Obviously running away but the wolves weren't the brightest so they were easy dodges. Tommy Montenegro, Male and married, and it was slightly less charcoaled so hey could tell Tommy was a pup. What they would do with those cards they didn't know, and that was it, they weren't gonna know.

Without even a Millisecond of warning all 4 of the remaining group members instantaneously blacked out. They knew nothing, they weren't conscious as they were brought to a different area. Neither Ryder, Skye, Marshall or Tucker retained any form of awakeness. They were practically knocked into a dream. They all fell on the ground, Tucker in a position that looked almost bone breaking.

Ryder woke up first, confused as to what happened but more confused as to where they were. Dark, dark, lightless room. No sounds but the quiet breathing of the still knocked cold pups on the ground. Walking around very carefully, all he felt was the ground of a black abyss. A colorless, lightless, soundless abyss with nothing but him and three pups.


	13. Finale

Tucker, Marshall and Skye all woke up at reletively similar times, although not the same the order didn't matter. Just as confused as Ryder, the pups aimlessly roamed around, well not exactly aimlessly, they had a goal it just wasn't existant in nothingness. It was really terrifying just to exist here. No sounds but eachother breathing, talking, walking or any other noise. They couldn't see anything but eachother seemingly standing on air. Just the thought that the final days of their lives could've been spent here, in nothing. Plagued with memories of their friends dying, all that they went through, all the horror pain and trama for absolutely nothing, dying in a black void with nothing but eachother as they slowly dehydrate. Zuma being permanently brainwashed and used for Rico's other horrors was something else. Although not for Tucker, knowing everyone in Adventure Bay's concern that they never came back. Death in a black void where you could hear the blood flow through your ears when in pure silence was an absolutely horrific thought.

They wouldn't die there though, not in a black nothing. They were finally able to see something that wasn't pure black, it was barely any better though. They were on sort of a flat rock, quite big like around sixty feet or something along those lines. A few orange streaks moving through the floor of the rock. Two, tall rock spires on each side. They weren't in a black void anymore, what they could see was that it looked like the rock was eternally falling through some reddish sort of landscape.

About five seconds of looking around ended when some kind of demonic figure emerged from the ground. Floating up above them it teased them by causing explosions in a circle around them. The figure had a very barely translucent black smokey looking humane body, very large and his eyes and mouth were orange and obvious.

"Not good." Marshall stumbled.

"What can we do?" Skye questioned.

"Run, I don't know!" Ryder said, scared beyond belief.

The figure, made a sort of sturing motion with its hand which created five tiny little tornadoes kinda orbiting the middle of the area they were slowly pulled in but were never fully taken before they disappeared. With no time to react the thing punched into the ground, not initially doing anything but it created a shockwave which somehow managed to launch Marshall onto its hand because of course it did. He was able to stand on the hand and he jumped off as figure took his fist back. The jumping is never the hard part its the landing, and when Marshall landed he slammed into the ground, not initially killing him but right after the landing he got punched into the ground full force by a large smokey hand. The figure, which will be refered to as Smokey for simplicity, had his hand open as he killed Marshall with it so it could pick him up and throw him at Ryder. Ryder couldn't dodge it so the dead corpse of Marshall just tossed Ryder across the rock.

Only Ryder, Tucker and Skye were left and Smokey wasn't letting up one bit. Smokey started to shoot some indescribable blue substance atat them. Ryder had them all hide behind the rock spire and it worked, they didn't get hurt. After using the tornadoes again without success, Smokey created some yet again indescribable substance although this time purple and slow. It was homing and just slowly followed them. This gave Ryder an idea though, and he did get to execute it. What he wanted Smokey to do just so happened to happen right after the homing things too. Smokey punched the ground right next to them and, resisting the shockwave, Ryder managed to lead the homing thing to hit Smokey's hand. Reacting to this, Smokey floated up, and just made a machine gun of fireballs which were way to fast and consistent to be dodgable. Ryder and Tucker ran towards a spire to hide behind but they were too slow. Ryder was hit first and Tucker was actually able to pull a sort of football move and dodge it once but got hit seconds afterwards. Skye though, ran towards the other spire, and thanks to Tucker's juke she managed to make it and got behind it.

Skye thought it was the end, she was the only one left and had no idea how to even hurt the thing. Sure it was hit once but Skye knew it wouldn't be dumb enough to use that combo again so she'd need another way, plus she had no idea how many times she'd have to hit it or if it would just flat out kill her on the spot. When all hope seemed lost, and as the spire began breaking from the fireball shower, she heard a very faint, quiet voice.

"Please, please just trust me." The voice said, as the fireballs stopped.

"What? Who?" Skye asked, since all she could hear was please due to the fireballs.

"It's me, Rico, I know it's hard, but please trust me rig8ht now." He spoke.

"Rico! You did all this!" Skye sort of angrily said, able to hear him now that the fireballs were gone but needing to vacate the spire as Smokey went round It.

"Shhhh. Just trust me, please." Rico replied with no reaction to anything.

"How? You killed all of them!" Skye cried, dodging multiple kind of ricocheting projectiles.

"He'll kill you if you don't anyway just do it!" Rico said, still quiet but a bit louder than before since the richocheting things were a little loud.

Smokey couldn't understand Skye's arguing which was effectively screaming at Rico since he was floating so high up and creating all these crazy things, so thankfully it wasn't the end for Skye.

"Fine! Just hurry." Skye agreed, hiding behind the other spire just waiting.

"Go in, please." Rico explained, as a portal like all the others appeared in fröont of her.

Skye didn't think for a second as she jumped in. The only hope for the last surviver was the one that put them through all that they did. Skye didn't know what Rico had planned for her, but whatever it was she just hoped it was better than death from some magical flying thing. It ended up being better, much, much better.

She landed back in the Theatre, with Rico standing there, next to the projector. He just stood there there, looking down but not really at the floor.

"I know you really hate me... but thank you so much." Rico spoke, obviously trying to hold back tears.

Skye really didn't know what to think. He was right when he said she hated him, but now she was confused. He put them through all this just to make a movie, but then when it was basically guaranteed that it would be over, that they would all die, Rico saves her and then says thanks? Rico wasn't stupid and either knew or could just tell Skye was confused.

"I can't explain right now, just let me be happy again for a few minutes." Rico said, again confusing Skye.

"What are you talking abo-" Skye got cut off.

"Let me be for a minute." Rico spoke over her.

She did, although she really didn't want to, she let him be. She wanted to know what was going on. So much confusion in such a small amount of time. She waited in the lobby for what felt like forever until Rico finally came into the room.

"Took you long enough!" Skye yelled.

"I took like three minutes." Rico explained.

"Too long!" Skye replied, getting an eye roll from Rico.

Rico sat down in the seat next to Skye and did what was basically preparation for a monologue.

"Oh my goodness it feels good to have a normal conversation with someone ok..." Rico started.

"So, I, uh, don't exactly know how to start, or where, so, um..." Rico stuttered.

"This isn't a normal conversation." Skye remarked.

"It's normal for what I'm used to!" Rico explained.

"Can you just start please?" Skye asked, eager to know what was happening.

"It's not that easy, alright? Ok, so, it never really was my decision to do the things I did. I mean I guess technically it was but, I didn't want to. I had an interest in movie making earlier in my life, I didn't really have any materials to do anything really, but I tried my hardest to make little things just for fun. That's important to know because you know the flying thing that I saved you from? Yeah, he's what was making me do... everything, um. He noticed how much I liked movie making and thought I'd be useful. He wanted a way to have fun and he thought it'd be fun to watch people and pups run around terrified and die in a real life movie set. He thought I'd be good at making it fun to watch, for how hard I tried on my own he thought I could make entertaining things for him. I didn't want to but he said he'd go and kill all the people and pups all around if I didn't entertain him enough or I refused. I had to, I tried my hardest to sneakily help everyone get out but it never worked until now. Thank you all so, so much..." Rico monologued.

"Sounds horrible." Was all Skye could say.

"Basically all bad things I did were him forcing me to do something, and I had to. Trapping you in the boat, the movie rush and really all attempts to kill you. I tried so hard to hide my helping by the WAY I talked and using really convincing reasoning. I teleported you straight to the end on the first one, I had doppelganger Zuma save you on the island, blah blah. I even hid radios around in hopes you could figure it out. No surprise you couldn't but still."

"Why did he try to kill us himself?" Skye questioned.

"I convinced him that the only way to kill you was for him to do it. He gave me all the magic I used against you all and honestly he's not the smartest so he never thought that I could just do everything he could but, he went in to try to kill you and have fun doing it." Rico responded.

"Why can't he get out then?"

"Goddamn with the questions. Ok, sorry, um, he can't get out because I turned the scenes off. You were inside of an actual movie at the time so that's where he went. If you turn a movie off it makes it all disappear, basically just become nothing, and since he is technically part of the movie at that point, you can guess what happened to him."

"Okay, I'm done with questions. Actually wait no can you bring my friends back?" Skye asked.

"Oh boy the last three are gonna be hard but yeah." Rico started, "Rubble, Rocky, Zuma, Zuzi and Chase will be simple enough, just gotta bring them back with the magic I still remain with and then teleport them here. The other three are gonna be hell though."

"Get the others first, you can think about how to get the others." Skye spoke.

"I have an idea, it's risky but I do think we can pull it off." Rico explained, as he got up to go bring the others back.

It was weird how he did it, he had a screen that shows what's happening and the magic seems to just come from his mind. He did bring all the others back and Skye explained the story to them. After all was said and done it was time for Rico to give his idea.

"So, since the others are dead on the same field as evil guy, when I turn on the scene I have to to bring them back, he'll come back too. What I think, though is that since he'll obviously come out immediately since he's clearly pissed. I'll make a portal for us to go into the movie with to get away, you all call the three currently dead members to our area where I'll have another portal. He should follow us in since he's mad and irrational and after we enter the portal back I can turn it off." Rico attempted to explain, "Understand?"

"Nope." Rubble immediately said.

"Oh lord. Ok, you walk into a portal, convince Tucker, Ryder and Marshall to come to anither portal and you go in that one too." Rico simplified it.

"That's more understandable." Rubble replied.

"I understood the first one." Rocky told.

"Well yeah I didn't, ok Rocky?" Rubble responded, getting a very small laugh from Rocky.

"Do we all know exactly what to do?" Rico asked for confirmation.

Getting a yes from everyone, Rico made sure they were all ready, made the two portals and prepared to begin. Hearts were racing and stress was higher than the moon as Rico turned on the scene, revived the deceased and ran towards the portal. Smokey did indeed come out of the movie and Rico and the rest immediately ran into the portal. They all cut the corner of the spire and yelled for the three. As they were running Smokey did indeed decide to show his face and as soon as that happened Rico hopped into the portal. All Nine managed to make it in just about a second later than Rico and as soon as they appeared in the theatre Rico hit the off switch.

"We did it!" Zuma yipped.

"Um, what?" Marshall spoke, basically dumbfounded.

Skye and Rico explained everything to them, during which all the others were chatting.

"Crazy ride, huh?" Chase said.

"Yeah and a forever traumatizing one." Rocky responded.

"Oh yeah for sure." Chase replied, "PTSD, insomnia, so much."

"It's not gonna be fun but we're alive." Rocky answered.

"Speaking of that, you saved my life." Zuzi spoke walking over to Rocky.

"I know I did." Rocky snickered.

"Might I ask why?" Zuzi questioned.

"You weren't making it with three legs, I thought I could make it too."

"Actually, hang on," Zuzi began, "Rico? Is my, uh, my-my leg fixable?"

"Yeah just, gimme a bit." Rico responded, turning around.

"Yay."

"I still have memories from when I was brainwashed. Rico gave me my old ones and never got rid of those." Zuma explained, kinda out of the blue.

"I'm pretty sure he could get rid of them." Chase told.

"No no no. I don't wanna live forever confused about what happened." Zuma replied.

Skye and Rico finished explaining everything to Ryder, Marshall and Tucker and they had just about the same reaction as the others. Skye joined the others as Rico went to Zuzi.

"I can't give you your actual leg back out here but I can make a prosthetic one." Rico told her.

"How do- you- know- how to do that?" Zuzi asked.

"The spirit fed me a lot of information so I could mess with people out here, like I did with Zuma." Rico responded.

"Why don't magic work out here?" Zuzi questioned.

"He didn't want me using it against him." He answered, "Now let's go."

They all went over to the room that Rico brought Zuzi to and it didn't really look like any orthodox surgery room but it was created by an evil spirit.

"Could you not just y'know, like magically make me a new one? Like put me in a movie and boom?" Zuzi asked.

"Sadly, no. Your leg was blown completely out of existence and I can't reanimated it. My magic is also limited and I can't just make a perfectly functioning and fitting new leg for you on the spot." Rico explained.

"Eh, alright. Let's just get the-the thing over with." Zuzi replied.

"First, you all should leave." Rico commanded, pointing at the others who were watching.

"Oh, why can't they be here?" Zuzi asked as they all walked away.

"I wanna say its because they shouldn't be watching a surgery, but really it's just because I don't want them hearing something they shouldn't." Rico explained.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Zuzi questioned.

"I know how you are, a few jokes that aren't the nicest." Rico joked.

"How well you know me?" Zuzi asked.

"Better than you know." He answered.

"You know me real well then. Every last part of me." She smirked.

"Exactly like that." Rico pointed out.

"No idea what you're talking about." She joked, looking around faking innocence.

"Why are you like that? You're just as old as they are." Rico asked her.

"I've- I've learned a lot from you y'know." She replied.

"I know for damn sure that's a lie." Rico said, "Alright whatever lets get to important stuff now."

"So I'm not important to you? I thought you knew all about me." Zuzi said.

"Sometimes, I actually do hate you." He responded.

"Yes you do."

"Ok so I do have to use anesthesia so you don't feel absolutely torturous pains. I can, though, put you in a movie after the surgery and stop all further pain from it then and there so you don't need the weeks recovery or whatever." Rico explained.

"I-I-I just want a leg, man." Zuzi replied, a little bit inpatient.

"I was taugh how to do this as a form of torture. Rip a limb off and put the prosthetic on. I couldn't stand to pain somebody so horribly so I normally just killed them in secret after the limb. They were gonna die anyway so I just made sure they would have indescribable pains." Rico explained, "Ah fuck this isn't about me it's about you, ok, so I knew how to put it on as torture and I know anesthesia eases the pain so that's my explanation."

"I-I don't care just-just gimme a leg please." Zuzi told.

"We've been here for only a few minutes give me time to prepare." Rico responded.

"Kinky." Zuzi joked, really just trying to pass time, Rico knew what she was saying so it was fun to mess with him.

"Could you please not do that?" Rico replied.

"I'm not doing anything." Zuzi sarcastically replied.

"You're trying to get something out of me you're not gonna get." He described.

"I don't want notthing but a- leg." Zuzi said.

"You want to embarrass me." Rico explained.

"Nah, I just wanna have some fun." Zuzi replied, "Uh, that, wasn't a joke."

"You played yourself." Rico mocked.

"I failed myself." Zuzi smirked.

"Haha. Alright just gimme a second and I'll get the leg, ok?" Rico told her.

"Alright then."

* * *

"So, when are we heading home?" Marshall asked.

"Whenever Rico says we can. I'm sure he has some things to do." Ryder explained.

"What do we tell Adventure Bay?" Skye questioned.

"Oh yeah that's gonna be hard." Ryder replied, slouching his stance.

"We'll think of that when he and Zuzi come out." Chase suggested.

"That's our best choice." Ryder told them all, causing them all to sit, relax for the first time in forever, and wait.

* * *

It took several hours before they even heard a door open. As soon as it did Rico told them all to not look at him or Zuzi. He didn't tell them why but it was just because he thought it might concern them to see her so motionless at the time. He had to do a couple of other things before the procedure. He was only taught the main prosthetic part but magic powers can teach you a lot and he learned himself the actual whole process on his own. He wanted something fun to do on his own while his life was being controlled. He didn't have to give her any medications or instructions in dealing with the leg because he put her in a movie to make any form of issue with it begone. Infections, care for the leg etcetera.

"It works." Zuzi said as she walked over to the group.

"That easily?" Marshall questioned

"Rico got the magic, y'know." Zuzi explained.

"Not technically me." Rico responded from the other side of Zuzi.

"How's it feel?" Rocky asked her, since obviously a robo leg isn't exactly normal.

"I love being just, uh basically just, normal again." Zuzi replied, gaining only a smile from Rocky.

"So, what are you gonna do now?" Ryder asked, looking at Rico.

"What do you mean?" Rico asked back.

"Since this whole movie thing is over, where's your life going?" Ryder answered, realizing how personal it actually was.

"Ah shit well. I really can't continue movie making anymore since it would be way too different. No matter how much I truly want to my life can't go down that path anymore. I can make an excuse I've heard of those who were renowned for one thing and had a different passion. I honestly have no idea what I'm gonna do but, I'll figure it out." Rico explained.

"Hmm, well, we can help whenever you need!" Ryder told him, with a happy tone.

"Thanks but, I'm not sure I will." Rico responded, "Well, do whatever you want now. None of us are controlled anymore."

"So I guess we're leaving now, huh? Zuma questioned.

"I guess so." Ryder replied.

"I do want to thank you more I just don't know how." Rico explained to them.

"You don't have to." Ryder began, "We save people all the time."

"Goodbye then." Rico said, standing still.

"Bye!" Ryder exclaimed as he and the group walked towards the door.

"Hang on a second." Rico told them before they could get out. "I forgot something."

Rico went away and came back with two pup packs, Rocky's and Zuma's. How even they had forgotten about them astonished them but they thanked Rico as they all walked out. All including Zuzi and Tucker.

"You're coming with us?" Skye asked both Zuzi and Tucker.

"Uh, yeah. I already like y'all more than where I, uh, where I-I lived before and I don't- I don't think he'd be here if, uh, if he didn't wanna come with us." Zuzi replied with a small grin.

"Well you'll both have to ride with somebody." Ryder explained, getting on his ATV.

"Zuzi can ride with me." Rocky said. "I don't know about Tucker though."

"I'll go with whoever." Tucker spoke.

"You're riding with me then." Chase told him, Tucker obliged getting in his cruiser.

"Back to Adventure Bay we go!"

* * *

The arrival at Adventure Bay was obviously very anticipated but also slightly dreaded. Obviously people would be asking about how it was and when the movie they're in is gonna premiere. Not everyone because not everyone cared about Rico but quite a few did due to proximity and his popularity in general. They wanted to sneak their way into Adventure Bay but they knew that would be nearly impossible. They have 6 loud engines and a helicopter all zooming at the same time, so yeah good luck with that. They would, however try to avoid talking to anyone before making it to the lookout to plan their excuse.

They did just that. They just drove passed people to get to the lookout. Nobody said anything to anyone, not even eachother until they were at the top of the lookout. So you can probably imagine the confusion both Zuzi and Tucker were experiencing. At the top they had Chase explain to the two where the hell they were and all the others brainstormed how to properly tell the lie. This was cut short however when Mayor Goodway called Ryder. All the pups stopped what they were doing to listen, although Zuzi and Tucker had no idea who this person was.

"Um... do I answer it?" Ryder questioned.

"I think you have to." Skye replied.

"Yeah, we just drove by in silence if we don't answer this that's gonna bring something up." Chase added.

"Alright you all think and I'll just stall for as long as I can." Ryder said answering the call.

"Mayor Good way! How's Adventure Bay been while we were gone?" Ryder started.

Ryder tried to keep the Mayor on the subject of Adventure Bay as long as possible which ended up being not so long. She really wanted to know how the experience was and Ryder really didn't know to respond. Except Tucker did. He gave out just a little cough to basically tell Ryder that he and Zuzi were something to talk about.

"We met two new pups there actually! I'm not sure exactly what I want to do with them. I'm obviously gonna keep them here since they came with us and its what they want. I just don't know how to use them for the team or if I even will." Ryder said the long drawn out sentence.

"Oh wonderful. Oh and I wanna know what Rico was like?" Mayor Goodway spoke.

"Actually, he didn't want them for a movie, he wanted them for a goodbye message. He's leaving movie creation once and for all and he wanted them along with us two to help him with it. It's a short little video and it'll go public soon." Tucker thought up on the spot.

"Oh No. But Why? Everyone loves his movies!" Mayor Goodway replied with a quick change in mood.

"Who knows?" Tucker answered.

"I guess Rico do, eh?" Zuzi joined, thinking quick and assuming a conversation on their side would leave less time for questions from Goodway.

"He had a secret for his movies he'll hold this one too." Tucker replied.

Mayor Goodway eventually hang up after complaining for a while. She didn't really ask any questions passed that point so they didn't have to do much more improvising.

"Good job Tucker." Ryder told him after the hang up.

"Yeah, thanks but, I said Rico is making a goodbye video with us and there isn't one." Tucker explained.

"Oh yeah, well I still have him as a contact since he called me before so we can tell him." Ryder responded.

"Isn't he leaving the theater for good?" Rubble asked.

"Rico told me he made little films at his house before all this happened. He's gotta have something there." Skye told everyone, recalling Rico's story.

"It doesn't have to be good it just has to exist." Tucker added, imagining possible outcomes.

"I'll call him up, I'm sure he'll be willing to help us." Ryder explained, and since he never put his pup pad away he just lifted it up, scrolled to Rico and tapped it.

"And what's so important?" Rico said as he answered, apparently his calls go to some stand in his hpuse since he wasn't holding anything and he had no tag.

"So, we kinda forged a lie that we need your help with." Ryder admitted, all the pups around him.

"Ah damnit I was comfortable too. What did you say?" Rico replied, more of a joking tone during the first part.

"We said you needed us for a goodbye video so, we need to come back and make something really quick." Ryder answered.

"I could just make one on my own." Rico explained.

"But we said you needed us, specifically." Ryder told him, Rico just slouched over a little.

"True. I have an idea of what I can do and it barely involves you so you wont have to stay long." Rico responded.

"Should we come now?" Ryder questioned.

"I don't need you at any particular time. Actually maybe I don't need you at all, only videos of you." Rico started, "I have a cooler idea that'll only work if you come here though."

"Which one do you wanna do?" Ryder asked.

"It's probably the last thing I'll publicly make. Which do you think?" Rico mockingly responded.

"We'll be there soon then." Ryder told with a small smirk.

"You're really... eh whatever come on." Rico said as he did a sort of come here gesture with his head.

"See you soon." Ryder replied as he ended the call.

"It's gonna look weird for us to drive back, won't it?" Zuma questioned.

"I never thought of that." Ryder responded.

"If anyone asks we can just say we wanted to visit Everest and Tracker since they watched Adverture Bay." Marshall suggested.

"Good idea. Let's go."

* * *

Really even their parts weren't very special but Rico really wanted as much effort to be in this before the deadline. All they were needed for was that at the end they all jumped on the screen with Rico in the middle as be "thanked everybody" and they were being the everybody in a sense. Nobody actually ended up asking why they went back that way. Either they didn't care or they assumed an emergency. Rico said that everything else in the video he would do himself. He even thanked them for giving him an incentive to make a goodbye since just disappearing out of nowhere would've been odd.

What he ended up doing was putting some moments from his movies on a background with him saying his goodbye overtop of it. They all come on at the end where he says a final thank you. It didn't take too long and everyone bought it. Everyone somehow bought his everyone joined his crew excuse being why no one came back from his theatre. Such an awful excuse that no one had half a brain to second guess it.

* * *

After they had finished doing what they had to with Rico, they drove home and were finally, after so long, able to relax. They weren't pressured, they weren't timed, and all they had to worry about was somebody getting in trouble and calling them which never ended up happening. Chase explained to Zuzi and Tucker all of what they needed to know about the lookout, Adventure Bay, the squad itself and any other questions they could have. One of such questions was were would they live? They knew at then lookout but the actual group members all had pup houses and they didn't. They eventually decided to have the two sleep up at the top of the tower with Ryder while he figured out what to actually do.

More about Zuzi and Tucker, Chase said they should probably go around talking to people. He gave them a list of key places and where to go but he said they should do much more than that. Tucker wasn't the biggest fan of talking to random people so Zuzi did it all introducing both of them and only squeaking words out of Tucker when she asked him questions. They were gonna be alright in Adventure Bay, although a little difficult to get used to, not knowing people or the town, they did get a general idea based in Chase's advice. Life was looking up for them, Zuzi showed it well and Tucker was as quiet as always.

* * *

"When are you gonna tell him?" Marshall asked Rocky in reference to Zuma.

"I... I don't think ever." Rocky began, "I thought I had him and boom gone."

"But you've gotta tell him come on now." Marshall urged.

"I just can't. Too much risk I can't." Rocky replied, shaking his head.

"I can't force you to I guess but, just, remember this." Marshall said as he turned and walked away.

* * *

"We need a picture with Zuzi and Tucker in it." Skye suggested, since they have only pictures of themselves.

"Yeah, actually good idea, Skye." Ryder responded, standing up.

"Yay!" Skye yelled.

Ryder got all the pups to group up, Zuzi far left, Tucker far right and all the others in the middle. He actually had a timer option for the camera so he could go stand in the middle.

"Alright, say cheese!" Ryder said as he started the timer and ran.

"Cheese!"

"Cheese!"

"Cheese!"

"Cheese!"

"Belgium."

"Belgium?" Chase asked Zuzi after the picture had been taken.

"Got an issue with Belgium?" Zuzi replied.

"No, it's just, why?" Chase explained.

"Because, Belgium is cool." Zuzi answered.

"Oh forget it." Chase said as he walked away from Zuzi.

* * *

So there's that; the story of a rescue group who went through events which will cause what will likely be lifelong trama by a movie maker trying to kill them for a movie just to realize he didn't wanna kill them at all. It's a strange story when put that way, or any way really.


End file.
